Scammers often use the beginning of a new semester to try to trick busy students and employees into turning over personal information. As you sort through your inbox this fall, make sure to keep your eyes peeled for these four common scams:
- Job offer scams: These scams often promise good pay for part-time work. This type of scam will often tell you to deposit a check into your checking account and then withdraw the funds to purchase gift cards or wire money to other accounts. The checks are later found to be fraudulent, leaving you on the hook for paying back the amount of the counterfeit checks. Never accept a job that requires depositing checks into your account and wiring portions to other individuals or accounts.
- Extortion/sextortion scams: These scams claim your account was hacked and you were secretly recorded while visiting adult websites. These “sextortion” scams often include passwords leaked in data breaches to make the threats appear legitimate. If you receive this scam and still use a password included in it, change it immediately.
- Disinformation scams: These scams may use fake information about current events to trick you into donating money or turning over personal data. Some scams to look out for include ones involving topics like COVID-19. As always, avoid opening attachments or clicking on links on unsolicited or suspicious emails. Also, if an attachment you open asks you to [Enable content] when you open it or make some other security downgrade, don’t do it – it’s a trick.
- Gift card scams: These scams often start with an email or text message that asks: “Are you available?” If you respond, the scammer — posing as a person in a leadership position — claims they are caught in a meeting, requests you purchase Amazon or iTunes gift cards on their behalf and promises to reimburse you later.
In addition to looking out for these common scams, we encourage you to take extra precaution when evaluating whether to click on a link or take another action in response to a message that has been marked as [EXTERNAL]. This label is applied to emails sent from non-Rowan University email addresses in order to flag potential phishing scams, most of which originate with external senders.
Cybercriminals are always scheming up new ways to trick you into giving them your usernames and passwords, so, it’s important to know how to spot a scam. Use our tips for spotting phishing scams and malicious websites to help protect yourself, take our quick security training that provides you with skills to spot various scams and always check our list of known scams if you receive an email you think is suspicious.
If you receive a suspicious email or text message, please contact the Technology Support Center at 856-256-4400 or forward the email to support@rowan.edu, and we’ll help you determine whether it’s legitimate or not.