{"id":2105,"date":"2019-11-20T23:23:49","date_gmt":"2019-11-20T23:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=2105"},"modified":"2019-12-02T14:35:30","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T14:35:30","slug":"phishing-emails-continue-to-target-hunter-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2019\/11\/phishing-emails-continue-to-target-hunter-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Phishing Emails Continue to Target Hunter Students"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Illustration by Ernie Smith, iStock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Phishing emails continue to bombard student inboxes with faux offers representative of a larger issue of spam emails nationwide.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Email scams have existed for over 10 years at Hunter, but \u201cin the past year and a half, it\u2019s become a much bigger problem and is happening more often,\u201d says Shayne Bernstein, associate director of Career Development Services. \u201cWe contacted IT and I know they are also aware of the scams, I don\u2019t know what their course of action is,\u201d says Bernstein.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Microsoft<\/span><\/a>, used by Hunter College, has seen a 250% increase in phishing emails during last year. <\/span>Scammers try to obtain personal information by luring victims using job offers, money or urgent messages to gain access to accounts, commit crimes and download viruses.<\/span><\/p>\n

The recent emails Hunter students receive are more intricate because they are specifically tailored to look like a trusted sender. Known as spear phishing, scammers leverage data and research information specific to Hunter to seem more believable by replicating offices such as Career Development Services.<\/span><\/p>\n

These emails are nothing new to students like Tamara Casco, a junior at Hunter College. She has been receiving it for the past three years and got hacked this semester. \u201cI never click on anything yet I got hacked,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n

Casco started receiving multiple emails saying a scam email that was sent from her account could not be delivered to the senders. \u201cI didn\u2019t realize until my social work professor forwarded an email I hadn\u2019t sent and let me know I was hacked,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s embarrassing because they sent it to every contact on my Hunter email.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Panicked, Casco went to the Hunter Information Technology office and was told to change her password. Once she did, it didn\u2019t make a difference when phishing emails were still being sent from her address. Immediately, she went back to the IT office who advised her to change her password into something harder. However, they did not offer any explanation as to how they are tackling this issue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Casco was frustrated and confused by IT\u2019s response. \u201cAre you not interested in knowing who hacked my account? Are you not interested in fixing it?\u201d she told The Athenian she wondered at the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The IT office tells students to <\/span>\u201ccheck it before you click it.\u201d<\/span><\/a> They ask to report the fraudulent emails and keep a<\/span> list<\/span><\/a> of reported emails dating back to 2016 which they provide as a resource for students.<\/span><\/p>\n

A representative from Hunter\u2019s IT office declined to comment on how they\u2019re handling the issue, calling it \u201ctoo political.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Job scams are popular in the phishing world. It \u201ccauses confusion for students who think it’s coming out of our office,\u201d says Bernstein. \u201cWe have a database where we research quality opportunities for students. We have a reputation to uphold and want students to feel secure.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A typical employment scam works like this: Once the student shows interest in the job, they are told certain supplies are required and is sent a check to deposit into their personal checking account. The bank makes the funds available before the check is cleared when scammers instruct them to wire funds to another individual for those supplies and to keep the rest. However, the check is fraudulent resulting in the student reimbursing the bank and losing money.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nationwide, 30% of targeted emails are opened by users and 12% of those users click on the malicious link according to<\/span> Verizon<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Members from Hunter College Students on Facebook frequently share the phishing emails they receive. Some reach out for help and question the validity of the emails, while others are amused by how terribly they\u2019re written.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know who else to ask for advice so I thought I would ask this group,\u201d wrote student Jen Pareja. \u201cI recently got an email from my own Hunter account saying I got hacked by a Trojan last October. They said they want me to pay or else they\u2019ll do something.\u201d Other students, however, were quick to inform Pareja it was a scam and to not fall for it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Students at CUNY\u2019s 25 campuses are experiencing these privacy issues. They are handled by CUNY\u2019s central office who switched Hunter\u2019s email to Office 365 which was meant to \u201cprovide better spam and virus protection,\u201d as stated on their <\/span>site<\/span><\/a>. However, emails continue to circulate affecting students.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to<\/span> Consumer Reports<\/span><\/a>, college students are more prone to identity theft. \u201cSome scams are very appealing because it\u2019s very little work for a lot of pay. Students fall for that,\u201d says Bernstein.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Federal Bureau of Investigation released a<\/span> statement<\/span><\/a> that phishing employment scams continue to lure college students all over the country leaving them vulnerable to identity theft.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnything that seems too good to be true, you should be wary of,\u201d advises Bernstein.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"infographic\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phishing emails continue to target Hunter students by hacking email addresses and sending mass messages to fool victims into giving up personal information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[184,116,211,212],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-cuny-hunter-college","tag-hunter-news","tag-phishing","tag-scam-emails"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2121,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions\/2121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}