Division of Information Technology (DoIT)
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Job Phishing Alert: Department of Biological Sciences

As Usual, The Job Sounds Really Good Except For Not Existing

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

 

From: CAMPUS JOB <ecowas101@gmail.com>

Date: Wed, Mar 2, 2022 at 6:09 AM

Subject: UMBC Student Hiring

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 7hrs/week.

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

 

Sincerely

Rachel Brewster

Associate Professor

Department of Biological Sciences 

Office: Biological Sciences Building, Room 480

Lab: The Brewster Lab

 

Please note that the Biological Sciences Department or Professor Brewster did not send this message. Three visible red flags in this email are:

  1. Whatsapp number.  A lot of scammers will ask for your WhatsApp number. If their number gets reported, they could easily create 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!

  2. 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! 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 tosecurity@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.


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