UC Scam Phising Emails

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - GENERAL
1

Hello fellow UC people. I was admitted to UCLA for this year’s class and for all of you already admitted, be advised, scam phishing emails are being sent out. I received 2 in the last 2 days (see below) so be warned that if you happen to receive any strange emails like these, they are scams. Please report them to security@ucla.edu. It is just so awful that they would already be doing this and to new students.

Example:
Hi Student,

I am Dr (-----------), I feel comfortable discussing this WORK- STUDY opening with you since you were referred by the university chamber of commerce. I am very busy that is why i have asked for your help as my temporary personal assistant. I provide individual and group therapy, coaching, assessment and many University of students with academic difficulties and no prior diagnosis are seen and assessed through the academic screening and assessment process.
You have received this email because you have an offer from the University Office to help Students with Disabilities to work with me while we help Students with disabilities frustrated with ignorance and lack of services but as my temporary personal assistant
This is a very simple employment, You will only help me Mail letters, Make payments at retail stores and purchase some Items when needed. This employment only takes an hour a day and 3 times a week for $1,150 weekly. I am unable to meetup for an interview because I am currently away and helping the disabled students in Australia.
You will be paid in advance for all tasks and purchased to be done on my behalf and some of my personal letters and mails will be forwarded to your residence or nearby post office for you to pick up at your convenience. Upon my arrival we will discuss the possibility of making this a long-term em ployment if I am impressed with your services while I am away. My arrival is scheduled 28 of june 20/20.
Please email your Full name, Residential Address to receive packages, Alternate email (different from school email) and Cell # to email below:-

Dr -------------- :- CONTACT ME BACK AT ---------------@gmail.com

Clinical Counselor
Disability Resources and Educational Services(DRES)

      You are required to fill the below details

Full Name:
Full address:
City:
State:
Zip code:
Age:
Mobile Phone number:
Alternative email (different from school email):
Await to read from you soon.

Warmest regards

Example 2:
Hi Student,
I am Dr. --------------, I feel comfortable discussing this WORK- STUDY opening with you since you were referred by the university chamber of commerce. I am very busy that is why i have asked for your help as my temporary personal assistant. I provide individual and group therapy, coaching, assessment and many University of students with academic difficulties and no prior diagnosis are seen and assessed through the academic screening and assessment process.
You have received this email because you have an offer from the University Office to help Students with Disabilities to work with me while we help Students with disabilities frustrated with ignorance and lack of services but as my temporary personal assistant
This is a very simple employment, You will only help me Mail letters, Make payments at retail stores and purchase some Items when needed. This employment only takes an hour a day and 3 times a week for $450 weekly. I am unable to meetup for an interview because I am currently away and helping the disabled students in Australia.
All assignment will be done from home Remotely due to high increase of the virus ?? around. Will keep you inform with details instructions.
You will be paid in advance for all tasks and purchased to be done on my behalf and some of my personal letters and mails will be forwarded to your residence or nearby post office for you to pick up at your convenience. Upon my arrival we will discuss the possibility of making this a long-term employment if I am impressed with your services while I am away. My arrival is scheduled for the last week of May 2020.
Please email your Full name, Residential Address to receive packages, Alternate email (different from school email) and Cell # to email below:- ---------------@gmail.com

Clinical Counselor
Disability Resources and Educational Services(DRES)

      You are required to fill the below details

Full Name:
Full address:
City:
State:
Zip code:
Age:
Mobile Phone number:
Alternative email (different from school email):
Await to read from you soon.

Warmest regards

2

I’ve gotten multiple of these in my UC Berkeley email; yeah, its phishing. I googled the exact email I was sent and other people had received the same thing. You could report it, but I doubt much can be done because whoever is doing it is sending it from different emails each time.

3

For anyone’s information, here is what the UCLA tech team sent me in regards to my report. I recommend taking you email off as they state. I also just want to commend them for being so thorough with the complaint and getting back to me so quickly!

Thank you for contacting the IT Security Office.

This is actually a common phishing scam targeting several UCLA users. These types of scams will typically not have any links or attachments, but will try to get the user to send some form of money to the scammer via social engineering. In terms of how this type of information is available to the scammer, our entire UC system has a publicly available database where you can search for people throughout multiple campuses: https://www.ucop.edu/directory------------------- – It’s highly likely that the scammer is downloading this publicly available information and blasting e-mails (notice the cluster of ------- related names, all of whom are UCLA affiliated) .
It gets difficult fully mitigating and blocking these types of scammers (it’s similar to a game of whack-a-mole) as the sender is constantly changing their e-mail address to avoid detection. What’s more is, because these e-mails are primarily just plain text, our e-mail security systems that traverse to @ucla addresses, don’t necessarily deem them to be inherently malicious (we block malicious attachments / malicious links though). As such, we rely on user security awareness to identify these types of phishing campaigns.

Reporting to Google and blocking the sender locally within your mailbox is definitely the recommended course:
Outlook:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/block-senders-or-mark-email-as-junk-in-outlook-com-a3ece97b-82f8-4a5e-9ac3-e92fa6427ae4
Gmail:
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en&oco=2
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/8151?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

Another thing I can advise, is to contact the directory team or update settings within your account via: www.directory.ucla.edu/update.php

In any case, please be cautious of any e-mails that you weren’t expecting, be wary of providing any personal information, clicking attachments, links, or sending money to/from any unfamiliar parties. If you’re unsure, you can always contact us to review the e-mail and we can confirm whether or not it’s a legitimate e-mail

(https://www.it.ucla.edu/security/alerts/phishing-scams/phish-bowl).

Hope this information helps.

Regards,

4

Good job.