Brock’s Information Technology Services (ITS) team is sharing tips to help students, faculty and staff recognize job scam emails.

Disguised as employment opportunities, these fraudulent messages are used by cybercriminals to steal personal information, money or both. These emails often appear as though they come from a trusted organization.

Signs of job scam emails include:

• Offers that seem too good to be true, including high salaries for minimal work.
• Requests for upfront payments, such as application fees, equipment costs or training charges.
• Vague job descriptions or job responsibilities that are unclear.
• Messages that urge recipients to immediately accept job offers.
• Grammatical or spelling errors, which can be common in phishing emails.
• Emails sent from public domains, such as Gmail, instead of official company addresses.
• Requests for sensitive personal information early in the hiring process.
• Suspicious links or unexpected attachments within the email.

Brock ITS advises users not to click any links in suspicious emails and to carefully review sender details before interacting with any job opportunity or email. Users can also protect themselves by confirming jobs are posted on official company websites.

Students, faculty and staff can send questions about job scams or report job scam emails to [email protected]