We want to alert students to be aware of emails they may receive about internship or employment opportunities. Phishing scams are on the rise and may come in via email, text, and phone calls. Your best line of defense is to not click on links within an email that you are at all suspicious of and never fill out any forms that you receive via email that ask for personal or financial information. Here are a few more tips to keep your information safe:
In the past few months, the campus Information Security Office has been receiving messages from students that have been involved in fraudulent job offers or internships. These messages appear to come from professors, using either spoofed email addresses or non-berkeley emails accounts that they claim is a personal account and contain subject lines like “Berkeley Students Part-time Job Position,” “STUDENT INTERNSHIP,“ or “VIRTUAL JOB OPPORTUNITIES.” From there, the criminals move the conversation away from email, usually asking to be texted on a mobile number or asking for the student to share a non-campus email or mobile number making it harder for our security team to track.
As part of their “employment,” students will be asked to order equipment or other items. They are told they will then receive a check to cover the order. The scammers will put a lot of pressure on the victim that they need to start ASAP, and have them order the equipment and pay for it via Zelle as soon as the check is deposited. Unfortunately, the check will not clear and the victim will be out the money paid via Zelle, and may also incur overdraft, late fees, or have their bank account closed.
To date, victims have lost more than $25,000, at an average loss of about $1,200 each, and these numbers only account for what has been reported to the Information Security Office. Recently, there were two incidents where quick-thinking students suspected something was not quite right and were able to put a stop to it before they lost any money. They did this by doing extra research including reviewing the anti-phishing materials such as the Phish Tank on the security website.
If you have been the victim of a scam please file a report with UCPD and report suspicious email to phishing@berkeley.edu or 510-664-9000 (option 4). If you have received one of these messages you can also help others by reporting it as a phish for our security team to research further.