College Stimulus Check Scam

The Federal Trade Commission warns of a phishing email scam aimed at college students. The malicious actor sends emails out claiming to be from the Financial Department of the student’s university. The email tells readers to click on the provided URL to get messages about their economic stimulus check. Once readers click on the URL it will require a university login to proceed.

These emails are phishing scams and once the URL is clicked on, the reader is either giving the malicious actors their personal information or even allowing malware to be installed onto their devices.

To help spot and avoid scams similar to the one above:

• If you have concerns about an email, look up a phone number or website of the sender/department that the email is claiming to be from. This helps to confirm you are calling someone who is real and not a malicious actor.  If there is no contact information, it very likely is a scam.

• Look out for bad grammar and spelling as this can be a tip-off that the email might be from a malicious actor. 

• Look out for wrong department names. For example the article found that one version of this phishing email claimed to be from the Financial Dept instead of the Financial Aid Department.  

• If you do receive any email that you suspect is a scam, please do not click on any URL or reply. Either of those actions confirms to the sender that your email address is valid. Please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu and delete the message.
  
  

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970

UMBC’s Office of Financial Aid and Scholarship:

https://financialaid.umbc.edu/

For more information, please check out:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2020/05/covid-19-scams-targeting-college-students