Job Scam Alert: Research Assistant Position

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 15:50:52 -0400
notice

Recently, the Division of Information Technology(DoIT) received a report of job phishing emails from a Gmail account (nikkijoy39@gmail.com) . The phishers are pretending to offer a job as a Research Assistant. Below is an example of the email. For privacy purposes, we removed the To field.

From: nikki joy <nikkijoy39@gmail.com>

University of Maryland, Baltimore County, The Office of the Department of Economics urgently needs the services of students to work remotely as research assistants and get paid weekly. The position is served remotely and assignments can be carried out in your leisure time. The position is open to students from any department of the institution UMBC. To proceed with the application process, contact Professor Christopher Hennigan now at (210) 701-1852 via text message stating your full name, email address, year of study, and department to receive the job description and further application requirements.

Best Regards,

Professor Christopher Hennigan

Department: Chemical Engineering

Technology Research Center,

Room 253

(210)701-1852

University of Maryland, Baltimore County

THIS JOB OFFER IS NOT REAL!

Red Flags

No legitimate job offer will ask you to reply by text message. This is intended to make the communication harder to detect and to document.

An office phone in UMBC’s Technology Resource Center will not have a 210 area code (San Antonio, Texas).

Campus job offers are supposed to get posted at Handshake (https://careers.umbc.edu/handshake/), not sent out as spam to various addresses.

Look at the contact at the end of the message. Prof. Hennigan is listed as a member of the Chemical Engineering department. He is unlikely to be looking for a research assistant for the Department of Economics.

If you respond to this message, they may send you a check to deposit. DO NOT DEPOSIT THE CHECK! If you have shared any banking information, CONTACT YOUR BACK IMMEDIATELY!

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.

If you need further assistance, please contact us at security@umbc.edu.

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