August 17, 2021

Scam alert

Recently there has been a surge in phishing and scams targeting UW students, faculty, and staff. Many of these emails appear to be job offers or alerts from UW accounts or UW offices.

There is a “fresh phish” below that offers $800/week with bonuses. More examples can be found on the Phishing Examples web page.

With some of these scams, the criminal sending the message ultimately tries to convince the recipient to buy gift cards, which are difficult to trace and easy to convert into cash.

Often the scams are either:

  • Org-chart related in that a supervisor is impersonated on messages sent to staff in their departments or colleges, or
  • Crafted specifically to look like a detailed job offer from employment services such as Handshake.

In many cases, the scammer will try to carry out the conversation via personal (not UW) email or text message if the victim provides a cell phone number.

Learn more on the Phishing Examples and Scams pages.

Please report any scam messages aimed at the UW community to security@uw.edu.


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