Beware of a “Job Offer” or “Bitcoin” scam circulating on campus. The scam gets students to upload their resumes to a job site and then they are contacted by potential “employers” offering them a job. All they need to do is deposit money into their bank account, withdraw the money, purchase bitcoin and then send the bitcoin to another account. As part of this scam, students are able to keep a “commission” from the money deposited into their account. After a few deposits made by the student, the bank realizes that the money is fraudulent and freezes the student’s account. This is a scam and it should be deleted immediately.
Do not respond to the message, do not click on links within the body of the message, and do not provide your name, or email address.
If you have already responded to this email, please contact the ITS Service Desk immediately.
Be wary of unsolicited email that asks for personal information, or tries to convince you to click on a web link to update personal information. These are often phishing emails.
How can you tell if an email is a phishing/scam attempt?
- Asks to send money/or other form of money such as Bitcoin, gift cards, cheques, etc.
- Many scams revolve around cashing bad or forged cheques.
- It asks you for your password or directs you to a webform asking for your password
- The subject line is in all caps
- There is a call for immediate action – “download this now” or “confirm you email identity now” or “click on the link below”
- There are spelling or grammatical errors in the email
- Sounds to good to be true, it probably is…
Please visit our IT security page for more tips on protecting yourself online.