Dear Community Members,

As remote work and the pandemic continues, unfortunately the nation is seeing an increase in internet and phone scams and attacks. These attacks and scams take many forms. For example, recently we have managed fake job offers, fake checks, fake charities, and unemployment fraud.

We need you to be aware of this problem, vigilant with your personal information, and help us all work together to make sure scammers and hackers are not successful. Stay updated on individual situations and scams by subscribing to the Division of Information Technology’s (DoIT) security feed. 

Protecting Yourself

• If an offer seems too good to be true, it likely is. 

• Scammers often impersonate someone when making fake offers. When you receive an offer, verify it is legitimate by directly contacting the person. For example, call a company with contact information from their website. Do not reply directly to emails.

• For offers that appear to come from members of the UMBC community, directly call or email the person making the offer after looking them up in the UMBC Directory.  

• UMBC sends many official messages through myUMBC Personal Posts, which are more secure than email. You can authenticate a myUMBC Personal Post by checking to see if you have a corresponding myUMBC notification. 

• Please forward any suspicious messages to security@umbc.edu and ask for verification. We will verify any offer for you.  

• Never provide your confidential information (credit card number, social security number, driver’s license number, passport number, etc.) to anyone via email, text message, or a web page. 

• No legitimate job offer will ever require you to send money or to buy things with your own money.

• If you receive a check you were not expecting, be suspicious, especially if the sender asks you to deposit a check and then send money or purchase items. Also, UMBC will never email you a check.  For additional information, please review the Federal Trade Commission’s website on fake check scams.

• Human Resources is responding to a state-wide increase in fraudulent unemployment claims. Learn more here.

Working Together to Help UMBC

• Report suspicious activity to security@umbc.edu. Don’t assume that something is obvious or someone else will report it; always report anything suspicious. Forwarding the scam or attack to UMBC DoIT Security allows us to notify the rest of the community and track the trends of what is hitting our campus.

• Check http://itsecurity.umbc.edu for information about scams and to subscribe to the article feed. Once subscribed, you will receive articles in your inbox as they are published. Check out our FAQ: How to Subscribe to DoIT IT Security Notices and Articles

Thank you for helping our community fight back against the scammers and attackers.

Mark Cather, Chief Information Security Officer, Division of Information Technology