The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has seen reports of a job scam claiming to be offering students a job as a research assistant in the Information Technology Center. The scammer is claiming to be UMBC staff member Catherine Manalansan. Below is an example of this job scam.

The job scam above is being sent from a gmail account <gabrieljelex7@gmail.com> and not an official UMBC account. The email is asking recipients to respond either by email or text with their personal information, for example their full name, cell phone number and major. 

Please note that UMBC has no organization called the “Information Technology Center”. If you receive this or any similar email, please do not respond.

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) is receiving reports of a job scam claiming to offer a remote position as a research assistant for the Information Technology Center. Below is an example of this scam where the scammer is impersonating a Professor Fei Cheng.

The message above is being sent from a Gmail account <nengenengab@gmail.com> and not a UMBC account. The email is claiming to offer a job as a research assistant. The email is asking recipients to respond either by email or text with their personal information, for example their full name, cell phone number and major. If you receive this or any similar email, please do not respond.

Also, please note that UMBC has no organization called the “Information Technology Center”, nor a Professor Fei Cheng, nor a medical school.

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  

UMBC’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT) asks that all students set-up a password reset email address for their accounts. This email address ensures that your profile is secure, and it makes the password reset process more efficient. This email should be different from your UMBC email address. But why is that important? If we believe your UMBC account is compromised, we will randomize the password on your account (we call it ‘scrambling’). Afterward, we will send you a link with instructions for resetting your password. We cannot send this link to your UMBC email, since you will not have access to it after the password change. Instead, we will send it to your password reset account.  Otherwise, to regain access to your email, you would have to contact TSC and provide proof of identity.

There are various reasons why DoIT would send you information about your UMBC account to your password reset email.  Sometimes Google will suspend your account on their own if they believe it may have been compromised.  Similarly, if DoIT staff see signs of a potential compromise (such as logins from several countries in one day), we will scramble your password.   In these scenarios, you will not have access to your UMBC account. We will send information on how to get your UMBC account back to your password reset address.

Since a password reset address is necessary to recover your UMBC email, it is also important to maintain that account and to remember its password. The account allows DoIT to communicate with you even if you can’t get to your UMBC email, and you can also use it to reset the UMBC password yourself . 

If you do not have a password reset email address, follow the instructions here to set one up: https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?id=94776

If you have any questions or concerns email us: security@umbc.edu

_________________________________________________________________________

Receive any suspicious emails?

Forward it to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers. Instructions for displaying the headers (you normally don't see them) 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) is continuing to receive reports of new variants of a job scam claiming to offer a part-time job as an Administrative Assistant at UMBC. Below is an example of one of these variants where the scammer is impersonating Abigail Granger.

The message above has been sent from a Gmail account <nsmith11@umbc.edu>, not Abigail Granger’s or any official UMBC account. In addition, the email claims to offer a job at UMBC, but asks the recipients to use text messaging which leaves no record of the communication in UMBC systems. If you receive this or anything similar, please do not respond.

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 UMBC community has been and is still being targeted by offers of fake jobs, mostly through email.  The nature of these jobs varies from scam to scam but they have certain things in common.  The worst commonality is that the scams, at some point, involve getting the victim to spend their own money in return for a fake check.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has posted advice on avoiding the fake check trap at: 

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-spot-avoid-and-eport-fake-check-scams

Please look at it.

Bad checks are at the root of several different kinds of scam.  The FTC posting provides some examples such as Mystery Shopping, Prize Claiming, and Personal Assistants.  Variations of the Personal Assistants scam have been reported to the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) with increasing frequency since last March.

The initial email may appear to be from some private company, often saying that you were recommended by some office at UMBC as a particularly promising job candidate.  Alternatively, it may appear to be from some actual person on UMBC’s faculty or staff who is looking for someone to fill a part-time position in a department.  

The job is usually described as requiring 5-10 hours/week and paying $250-$350/week.  This is good enough pay to sound promising without seeming too good to be believed.

Once the victim has agreed to the job (without an interview or even speaking to anyone in person), they will be assigned to do something which costs them money on behalf of their supposed ‘employer’.  The victim may be assigned to purchase gift cards, or to send a check or even to wire money to some other party.

In order to cover the cost, the victim will be sent a check covering the amount spent plus some more for ‘salary’.  The victim is instructed to deposit the check and then to spend their own funds immediately.  After 3 to 5 days, the victim’s bank will send notification that the check did not clear and that no money has been credited to their account.  The money they spent on behalf of the scammer is now gone.

Please look at the FTC advice for more detailed information about not losing your money by avoiding these scams, and about how to report them to the FTC.  Here’s the link again:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-spot-avoid-and-eport-fake-check-scams

If you receive what you think 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.

In addition to any other reports you make, 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 them 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.