The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has received several reports of insurance scams via telephone and email. To help protect the UMBC community from identity theft, DoIT is sharing some information about identity theft.

According to the Maryland Department of Labor, identity theft is the illegal process of stealing an individual’s personally identifiable information(PPI) such as a social security number (SSN), name, address, credit card, or banking information. These pieces of information can be used to incur debt or purchase things in the victim’s name. They can also be used to make fraudulent insurance claims in the victim's name and to redirect payment to the thief. The victims are not usually aware of the theft until months or years after the crime was committed.

According to the Federal Trade Commission(FTC) and the Maryland Department of Labor, to protect yourself from identity theft follow these steps:

1. Keep your financial records, medical records, and SSN card in a safe place. If you need to get rid of these documents, shred them, use a dark marker to blackout information, or even burn them.

2. Collect your postal mail as soon as it arrives.  Do not leave it where the addresses can be seen (such as on a seat in your car).

3. Never give out your SSN or bank account information over the phone. 

4. If you are filling out a document that requires your SSN or bank account information, contact the organization directly. Ask the question such as:-

1. Why do you need it?

2. How will you protect it?

3. Can you use a different identifier?

4. Can you use just the last four digits of my SSN?

5. Carry a minimal amount of personal information and debit or credit cards with you.

If you have received any emails from ANYONE, your professors included, asking for your SSN or financial information immediately send the email along with the headers to security@umbc.edu. We will help you verify these messages. 

Instruction on how to forward email headers: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970

To protect yourself from telephone scam, please read this DOIT article: https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?id=101261

If you receive a call from ANYONE, UMBC included, asking for your personal information. 

1. Tell the individual that you will call them back. You do not need to rush.

2. Call the organization or person the caller is claiming to be. 

3. Talk to someone in the organization to verify the information that was provided earlier on the phone. It’s okay, you do not have to call the individual back. Always be suspicious of everyone when giving out your PII.

If you think that you are a victim of Identity theft contact the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, Division of Consumer Protection at 410-528-8662 or visit https://www.marylandattorneygeneral.gov/Pages/CPD/default.aspx

In addition to contacting the Division of Consumer protection the Maryland Department of Labor suggests that you do the following:

1. Request copies of your credit report from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion, the larger credit reporting agencies, and dispute any inaccuracies.

2. Contact the creditors to close the unauthorized accounts, change passwords or restrict access to the accounts.

3. Place fraud alerts and a victim’s statement on each of your credit files maintained with the major credit reporting agencies.

4. Request that the credit reporting agencies remove any inquiries referencing the fraudulent accounts.

5. File a report with your local police department.

6. File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission: 

7. File a complaint with the Commissioner of Financial Regulation.

8. You may place either a fraud alert or a security freeze on your consumer credit report by contacting each consumer credit reporting agency (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) and requesting the appropriate action.

For more information about identity theft (including information about your credit reports) visit:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-identity-theft

https://www.dllr.state.md.us/finance/consumers/idtheft.shtml

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Receive any suspicious emails?

Forward it to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers. Instructions for doing so can be found at the UMBC support wiki: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

Follow us on myUMBC:https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/itsecurity

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has seen reports of a scammer impersonating a UMBC professor. An example of this scam is included below.

The phishing message above is claiming that the scammer is busy and needs the user's help. In the past previous scams like this involved the scammer asking the user to purchase them gift cards, wire transfer money, or purchase them crypto currencies. 

Even though the message looks to be coming from a UMBC personnel, please note the From email is not actually from a UMBC domain but instead is coming from Gmail <officeonline1632@gmail.com>. 

What to do now?

If you do receive this or a similar scam, please DO NOT respond any further or click on any URLs. If you have provided any banking or financial information, please notify your bank or financial institution immediately. If you have been sent a check, you should not attempt to cash or deposit it. If you have deposited a check already, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

Whether you responded to the scam or not, please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu. We will also keep track of any other information you submit about the scammers, such as their phone numbers. If you were sent a check or other materials, please send pictures of it and the envelope they came in.

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970  

To read more articles published by DoIT Security please visit: 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?tag=notice. 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/home/covid-19-news/?tag=covid19 

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has seen a report of a phishing scam where the scammer is asking users to search for a YouTube clip and to share the message. Below is an example of this phishing email.

The phishing email has the subject “For UMBC Athletic staff: Dean hiding writer's identity of his thesis” and is from a <jwhite09@rediffmail.com>. In the past DoIT has seen similar versions of this scam, for more information on those please see this link here https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?id=98547. 

Please note some of the grammatical mistakes in the message above. These can be a red flag for phishing emails. Some other red flags are the message’s request to the readers to share the message with other UMBC athletic staff, and the fact that the email itself is not even from a UMBC domain but instead rediffmail.com. 

What to do now?

If you do receive this or a similar scam, please DO NOT respond any further or click on any URLs. If you have provided any banking or financial information, please notify your bank or financial institution immediately. If you have been sent a check, you should not attempt to cash or deposit it. If you have deposited a check already, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

Whether you responded to the scam or not, please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu. We will also keep track of any other information you submit about the scammers, such as their phone numbers. If you were sent a check or other materials, please send pictures of it and the envelope they came in.

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970  

To read more articles published by DoIT Security please visit: 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?tag=notice. 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/home/covid-19-news/?tag=covid19 

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has seen many different reports of Phishing and job scam emails sent to UMBC accounts. This article will list some helpful tips to spot phishing emails.

Here are some tips to help spot phishing scams when looking at the email body you should look for:

• Disjointed “From/Received/Reply” email address. Make sure the email address lines up with who the email is from. If you receive an email from a user claiming to be from UMBC, they probably should have emailed from their UMBC account and the X-Sender and Reply-to in the headers shouldn’t be from non-UMBC domains.

• Mis-branded and Disconnected/fake URL. Make sure the URL that the email provides is actually sending you where you think it should. Just hover your mouse over the URL and search engines like Google will show you where it will take you.

• Unexpected file attachments. Never open or download a file from any unsolicited email. This is how malicious software could end up on people's devices.

• MIME-Type mismatches.

• Unexpected requests for action and sense of urgency. A red flag for any phishing email is when the email is not only giving the user a sense of urgency but asking them to perform an action that feels out of place. For example buying gift cards for your boss who is stuck in a meeting.

Another way to check for phishing emails is to look within the email headers. To find out how to see an email header please see the link below on how to forward full email headers.

Within the email headers you can find simple things that show red flags such as again the Reply-To and X-Senders. 

• X-Sender is a good way to tell if an email might be being spoofed as if the from is a UMBC domain but the X-Sender is a random domain this is a red flag.

• Reply-To helps to show if an email is phishing or not as well. If the reply-to is different from the from address that is a red flag. At UMBC we see where scammers will compromise a UMBC account and put their own email address in the reply-to to trick users.

What to do now?

If you do any email that you suspect is a scam, please DO NOT respond any further or click on any URLs. If you have provided any banking or financial information, please notify your bank or financial institution immediately. If you have been sent a check, you should not attempt to cash or deposit it. If you have deposited a check already, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

Whether you responded to the scam or not, please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu. We will also keep track of any other information you submit about the scammers, such as their phone numbers. If you were sent a check or other materials, please send pictures of it and the envelope they came in.

Information above came from a webinar from https://www.knowbe4.com/.

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970  

To read more articles published by DoIT Security please visit: 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?tag=notice. 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/home/covid-19-news/?tag=covid19