One discourse community not in my list that I have chosen is College students. College students continue to be targeted in phishing email scam, like me I’m pretty sure students not only in City Tech but across the nation have receive at least once in their college life a phishing email. Scammers target not only first time college students which are the more vulnerable because they might be away from home for the first time but also on those more experience students. I’d like to talk on how to spot this type of scams , how not to fall for these scams and what is being done by Colleges to handle this problem.
Most phishing email scam usually offer a type of part-time work for exorbitant amount of money, one of those email I received myself: ” Hi my name is Doctor Paul Harrison and I work as a clinical counselor for the Department of Disability of Health and Human Services (DHHS)….You received this email because you have an offer from the university office for Students with Disability to work with me…… This is a very simple employment. you will only help me mail some letters, make a few payments at Walmart, and purchase some items when needed, this will only take one hour a day , three days a week for $320 weekly….. I cannot meet up because I’m away helping disable students in Australia.” notice these kind of scams always comes from Doctors or Wealthy people that are always away and can’t meet up with you regarding the employment offer they just made you, colleges are trying to alert students but most of the time those students have already fallen for the scams
I think this is interesting subject matter. Many serious data breaches and financial losses has occurred using this technique. E-Mail and Phone and web sites are particularly susceptible to this type of attack. I had an interest in con games years ago. And am a big fan of the movie “The Sting”. What I discovered is that many scams are basically rooted in the same technique. The only thing that changes is the story. Of particular concern are fake web-pages linked to the phony e-mail. Many business now have incorporated safety features in their mail to certify it is in fact from them. I believe phishing is a con game type of attack because it is a human error that allows the breach. The attacker “hoodwinks” the victim with a clever ruse to make them drop their guard. Whereas, other like DOS or malware are mechanical attacks requiring expertise.
Hey Isaac, I agree with you that phishing emails can be hard for some students to notice whether they are real or just scams. Good thing you said you getting emails on part-time jobs is a scam because I’ve also been scammed once from a part-time job offered both mailed and emailed. I remember during the summer, I tried to do a part-time job where I would work in customer service for customer service sales. I texted the manager for more information and such and everything seemed legit. She then told me that I have an interview in 2 days. Next thing you know when I’ve went for the interview, no one showed up. The screen was blank. Right away I shut everything off knowing it was a scam and remembered that emails that offers part-time jobs where you are working for others for a certain amount of money doesn’t seem right. That is why students should be very careful with phishing emails and I’ve definitely encountered my 1 phishing email and hopefully will not again.