A community member reported a new scam by telephone.  The caller claimed they were from a pharmacy, and in partnership with Aetna, would provide over the counter medications mailed to their home for free.  The caller had the individual’s name, address, and date of birth.

Cyberattackers will take advantage of any opportunity to scam people in order to steal money.  With the current public health emergency, there will be an increase in telephone, email, and website scams.  Please be hyper-vigilant when answering calls, responding to emails, and clicking on links, especially from social media.

Here are some tips for spotting a phone scam:

• Ask what company the person is calling from
• If possible, put the person on hold and look up the phone number they are calling  from on your computer
• If it’s a known company, offer to call them back on their verified number
• Any caller who asks for restricted information such as social security number, credit card number, family member’s names, personal address, or home phone is suspect

In this case the person who received the call offered to contact Aetna to verify that this was a valid offer.  At that point the caller hung up the phone.

Please always report suspicious emails, phone calls, and even websites to catchoftheday@vassar.edu

Thank you all for your diligence and continued reporting!

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Today we received multiple reports of email messages claiming to be from Vassar personnel.  All of these messages came from gmail.com, not from vassar.edu.  The messages ask the recipient to reply quickly for an unspecified favor, or ask if someone is “available”.

If you receive one of these messages, please email it to catchoftheday@vassar.edu and then delete it.  If you engage the sender, it will lead to a fraudulent financial transaction.  The emails are from a criminal who is trying to steal money by impersonating Vassar employees and targeting people within an individual’s department or organization.  The criminal tries to convince the recipients to purchase one or more gift cards and send back the redemption codes.  This is a common scam based on existing trust relationships among employees.  Remember to always double-check the “from” and “reply-to” addresses in email to verify the sender.  It is a good practice to contact the purported sender through a known phone number, or create a new email sent to the person’s vassar.edu email address, to ask if the original request was authentic.

The reports today were for five separate instances of impersonation, targeting five different department heads.  All of the incoming email addresses were blocked as soon as they were brought to our attention, in order to prevent additional communication from the criminal.

Thank you for your attention and thank you as always for your timely reporting!  The diligence from our community members keeps all of us at Vassar College more safe and secure.

Over the last few days, we have received multiple reports of email messages claiming to be from Vassar personnel.  These messages come from outside email addresses, not from a vassar.edu address.  The messages ask the recipient to reply quickly for an unspecified favor, or ask if someone is “available”.

If you receive one of these messages, please email it to catchoftheday@vassar.edu and then delete it.  If you engage the sender, it will lead to a fraudulent financial transaction.  This email is from a criminal who is trying to steal money by impersonating a Vassar employee and targeting people within the person’s department or organization.  The individual would try to convince the recipients to purchase a gift card and send back the redemption code.  This is a common scam based on existing trust relationships among employees.  Remember to always double-check the “from” and “reply-to” addresses in email to verify the sender.

We have also received a report of this same scam being send by text message to mobile phones.  Please report any impersonation attempt that occurs by text or phone call in addition to via email.

Thank you for your attention and thank you as always for your timely reporting!  The diligence from our community members keeps all of us at Vassar College more safe and secure.

Over the last few days, we have received reports of email messages claiming to be from Vassar personnel.  These messages come from outside email addresses, not from a vassar.edu address.  The messages ask the recipient to reply quickly for an unspecified favor, or ask if someone is “available”.

If you receive one of these messages, please email it to catchoftheday@vassar.edu and then delete it.  If you engage the sender, it will lead to a fraudulent financial transaction.  This email is from a criminal who is trying to steal money by impersonating a Vassar employee and targeting people within the person’s department or organization.  The individual would try to convince the recipients to purchase a gift card and send back the redemption code.  This is a common scam based on existing trust relationships among employees.  Remember to always double-check the “from” and “reply-to” addresses in email to verify the sender.

Thank you for your attention and thank you as always for reporting suspicious emails!  The diligence from our community members keeps all of us at Vassar College more safe and secure.

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We have received multiple reports of email messages claiming to be from Carlos Alamo,  Dean of the College.  These messages come from an outlook.com address, not from a vassar.edu address.  The message asks the recipient to reply quickly for an unspecified favor.

If you receive one of these messages, please ignore and delete it.  If you engage the sender, it will lead to a fraudulent financial transaction.  This email is from a criminal who is trying to steal money.  The individual would try to convince the recipients to purchase a gift card and send back the redemption code.

Thank you for your attention and thank you as always for reporting suspicious emails!  The diligence from our community members keeps all of us at Vassar College more safe and secure.

We have received multiple reports of email messages claiming to be from Jon Chenette,  Dean of the Faculty.  These messages come from a gmail.com address, not from a vassar.edu address.  The message asks the recipient to reply quickly for an unspecified favor.

If you receive one of these messages, please ignore and delete it.  If you engage the sender, it will lead to a fraudulent financial transaction.  This email is from a criminal who is trying to steal money.  The individual would try to convince the recipients to purchase an Amazon gift card and send back the redemption code.

Thank you for your attention and thank you as always for reporting suspicious emails!  The diligence from our community members keeps all of us at Vassar College more safe and secure.

This is an informational post about recent complaints CIS has received about voicemail messages left on phones around the campus.

We have received numerous reports of phone calls coming into campus with an inbound phone number from New York City (area code 212) where the caller leaves a voicemail message of varying lengths.  All callers are reported to be speaking an East Asian language.

These phone calls are a well-known scam that targets Asian Americans.  It is similar to the United States based IRS scam, where a caller purports to be calling from the IRS about owing money.  In this case, the ruse is that the target person is being investigated by the Consulate.  If a payment is made to the caller, the complaint will be dropped.

These calls are not malicious but engaging with the caller could lead to a loss of personal funds.  Please do not engage the caller at all.  If the person leaves a voicemail and you have voicemail to email capability, please forward it to catchoftheday@vassar.edu so we can track the complaints.  After forwarding you are free to delete the original voicemail.

For more information on this type of scam, please see this article from earlier this year:

https://www.npr.org/2018/05/10/609117134/chinese-robocalls-bombarding-the-u-s-are-part-of-an-international-phone-scam

Thank you to all who have reported this and keep the suspicious emails (and phone calls!) coming.  Your contributions help keep Vassar safe and secure from Phishing, Spam, Fraud, Viruses, and all sorts of cyber criminal activity!