The Fall college semester has just started and scammers are revisiting a scam first seen during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in which the scammers send out emails similar to the one shown below from 2020 to college students claiming to come from the Financial Aid office of the targeted student’s college or university telling them that they are eligible for an economic stimulus check.  The targeted victims are instructed to click on a link which then prompts them to log in to their college or university account in order to initiate the process to receive the check that will never come.  The problem is that when a student logs in, he or she is not logging into their college or university account, but merely providing their log in credentials to scammers who can use that information to make the student a victim or identity theft or to perpetrate other scams.

TIPS

As I often tell you, whenever you get an email, text message or phone call, you can never be sure as to who is really contacting you so whenever you are asked to click on a link, download an attachment, provide information or make a payment in response to any communication, you should verify that the communication is legitimate.  The danger of unwittingly downloading malware or providing information that can lead to identity theft is too great to trust the communication.  Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.   One indication that this particular email is a scam is the reference to the “Financial Dept.” when most schools refer to this department as the “Financial Aid Department.”

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