NOTICE: Increase in student job scams at start of fall term

08/25/2022

Scammers are impersonating faculty, U-M departments or other institutions by using sophisticated-looking emails that offer jobs in return for favors.

This message was sent Thursday, August 25, 2022, to U-M IT leadership and the Security Community.

Help spread awareness of ongoing student job scams

With fall term approaching, the number of fraudulent student job/internship scams is on the rise. Please be aware of these ongoing scams and share this information with your career centers, student advisors, and faculty.

Scammers use publicly available directory information to obtain U-M email addresses of students, faculty, and staff. They also use online tools to make their emails look more sophisticated.

The scammers impersonate faculty or departments at U-M or other institutions, contact students and offer them jobs, but ask the recipients of the message to do some favor or favors for them in return, usually involving helping to acquire things of value like gift cards, or to process a check that turns out to be fake. Sometimes this scam is used to collect personal data to be used in further scam attempts or other fraud.

For a detailed description of the scams, see Job Offer Scams on the Safe Computing website.

Questions, concerns, reports

Please contact ITS Information Assurance through the ITS Service Center.

References