Fake job emails sent to college students are fairly common. They often put you off guard since they can mention the town or the school you are in currently. There are several simple ways to avoid being scammed.
How can you spot these scams?
- It’s very unlikely you will get a real job opportunity in a generic email.
- The From addresses often doesn’t make sense or looks like a burner email account (yakubb2018@gmail.com, wlillamsemma1985@gmail.com)
- The message is inside an attachment (txt or zip file) to avoid detection from Google’s spam filters.
To assist us in the future send the suspicious email to spam@williams.edu and then report it to Google by choosing “Report phishing” from the pull down menu next to Reply.
Williams students have been defrauded several hundred dollars from similar scams in the past – it usually involves them sending you a check which you deposit in your own account, then they ask for some of it back or they ask you to buy some needed equipment for the job from them. The check they sent eventually turns out to be bogus.
We’ve seen at least three of these scams sent to Williams accounts in September 2018 alone.
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