October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're posting a blog article every week throughout the month, covering hot topics that we know impact our community in a big way. To kick things off, we're talking about job scams.
Fake job offer emails are an always present threat to our student community, and now that Fall term has started these scammers have ramped up their efforts. The goal of these scams is to steal your personal information and money.
Job scam emails generally follow a pattern. An unsolicited email appears in your inbox advertising a job that is almost too good to be true, usually high pay for low effort, and often with a surprising lack of supervision. These emails typically come from a non-pdx.edu email address, but could come from a compromised pdx.edu account. In the body of the email, you are provided with an alternate non-pdx.edu email address or phone number to contact instead of replying directly to the message. You are often told to email them from a personal email address rather than your pdx.edu email.
If someone engages with the scam by filling out a form or replying saying that they are interested in the offer they will get a reply asking for personal information such as name, address, phone number, bank account information.
Once the scammer has your banking information, they will deposit funds into your account. Next, they will reach out saying that they’ve overpaid you and to send a portion of the money back, or they may ask you to use the money to buy gift cards and send them photos of the gift card numbers. The story may change, but ultimately they are asking you to provide them with some or all of the money they deposited in your account.
This all happens quickly, and for good reason: The funds that were deposited into your account initially are fraudulent and the deposit will bounce within a few days, leaving you in a situation where you’ve sent the scammer money and have received nothing in return and you may even have a negative balance on your account.
Some common job scams that we have seen have been for virtual assistant positions, service worker positions, market research positions where local market prices on various products are to be compiled, and get paid to drive your car advertising positions.
To protect yourself from these scams, it is important to understand that scams like these exist and there are people who want to take advantage of others. There are some common red flags in job scam emails that you can look for to identity if a job offer may be a scam:
- Unsolicited, and too good to be true, offers
- Unusual hiring process - requests for personal information with no resume, application, or interview
- Unusual or unknown senders
- Odd requests such as not using your pdx.edu email
- Odd requests from a known sender, such as someone in the math department advertising a personal assistant job for the art department
- Requests for personal information, such as password, bank information, social security number
- Payment before any work has been completed
PSU offers an employment portal for students, Handshake, where you can look for, and apply to, legitimate positions. More information about using Handshake can be found on the University Career Center website, and will be linked below.
If you receive a job posting and are unsure if it is legitimate, or have questions about finding legitimate jobs, contact the University Career Center at careers@pdx.edu, 503.725.4613, or visit them at FMH 342.
The Information Security team is available to help as well. To inquire about an email’s legitimacy, or to report known scam and phishing emails, please reach out to security@pdx.edu.