Job Scam: JOB OFFER -- Department of Biological Sciences

Wed, 20 Jul 2022 18:08:42 -0400
notice

Recently, the Division of Information Technology(DoIT) received multiple reports of a job phishing email. The scammers sending these emails are impersonating Professor Hoffman of the Department of Biological Sciences. Below is an example of such an email. For privacy purposes, we removed the To field.

From: CAMPUS JOBS <roger.nicholson911@gmail.com>

Date: Wed, Jul 20, 2022 at 5:05 PM

Subject: JOB OFFER

To:

The service of a student administrative assistant is urgently required to work part-time and get paid $315 weekly. Tasks will be carried out remotely and work time is 14 hours per week.

If interested, submit your updated resume, a google hangouts email address, and a functional whatsapp number to our Department of Biological Sciences via this email address to proceed.

Sincerely

Kathleen Hoffman, Ph.D.

Affiliate Professor, Biological Sciences

Professor, Mathematics and Statistics

Department of Biological Science

Office: MP434

Please note that neither the Biological Sciences Department nor Professor Hoffman sent this message. Three visible red flags in this email are:

1. The From address is not a UMBC email address. If the Biological Sciences Department or Prof. Hoffman were sending this email, the From address would have been a UMBC email address. However, it was sent from <roger.nicholson911@gmail.com>, which is not a UMBC affiliate. Also, “roger.nicholson” is not the same as “Kathleen Hoffman”. Please note that the From address can be spoofed, even if it appears to originate from a UMBC email. Therefore, always check with DoIT (security@umbc.edu) or email/contact the impersonated person on a completely different email when you see a conflict in the address. For reference, use UMBC’s online directory at https://www2.umbc.edu/search/directory/advanced/

2. Whatsapp number. A lot of scammers will ask for your WhatsApp number. If their number gets reported, they can easily get a new one. The same can be said for an email address; however, if their email is blocked, they will lose responses from other phishing email recipients. If you ever receive a job offer asking for a WhatsApp number or a phone number in general, BE SUSPICIOUS!

3. The email template. This template is very common. After a quick Google search, we found a few Job scams articles with the same template. So if you are ever in doubt, Google it! Just copy-and-paste several sentences of the text into Google. UMBC will not use a known phishing template to offer you a job opportunity.

For more information about phishing, visit: https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?id=98136.

If you have received any message similar to the one listed above, please forward it with its headers to security@umbc.edu. For instructions, visit: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Receive any suspicious emails?

Forward it to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers. For instructions, visit: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970.