Body: 

Dear OSU Community members,

 

Cyber fraudsters and criminals are targeting OSU students with increasing sophistication. No longer is it a scammer representing themselves as royalty or a successful person from a distant country reaching out to seek your help in move a fortune (and willing to give you a payment for your troubles!).  We are seeing spoofed e-mails from individuals fraudulently representing themselves to be OSU faculty providing students with job opportunities. We are seeing e-mails and phone calls to students claiming that people are delinquent in payments to OSU.  We are seeing students being targeted by “immigration officials” that demand payment to avoid legal action.

 

Cyber criminals are interested in causing people to feel they are in a time crunch and that immediate action must be taken to solve a problem, and most times, it also includes an ask for money. 

 

Please note that OSU will only use official university e-mail to notify a student of a problem with their student account, and will never ask for credit card or banking information to be provided.  OSU faculty will never ask a student to perform a task such as buying gift cards or for banking information in the course of offering a job. 

 

It pays to look at e-mail addresses carefully; we often see addresses like: [email protected] that at first glance appear to be an OSU e-mail when they are not.

 

Any communication that seems suspicious should be validated.  If you need assistance in determining whether an e-mail, phone call, text or direct message is valid or is fraudulent, please contact the university’s Office of Information Security at [email protected]. 

 

Have a safe and enjoyable summer!

Respectfully,

David

 

David McMorries, Chief Information Security Officer, Office of Information Security

Oregon State University | University Information and Technology | 541-737-9561

 

Category: 
Campus Operations
Send Date: 
Monday, June 14, 2021