Hey college students: have you seen this scam?

Hey college students: have you seen this scam?

This article was originally posted by the FTC. See the original article here.

Scammers are targeting college students. In the last year, we told you about a car wrap scam and a COVID-19 scam hitting college students. Today, we want to tell you about a fake check scam.

In this one, a scammer posing as a professor sends you an email. It uses a college domain name and a format like your.name@collegename.edu. The scammer offers you a part-time job, like personal assistant or dog walker. Then, the scammer sends you a check, asks you to deposit it, send some of the money to someone else, and keep the rest as payment. A while later, the bank realizes the check was fake and deducts the original check amount from your account. So, if you deposited a $1,000 check, they’ll take that back. But if you sent $400 to someone else, you’re now out $400 of your own money.

People report losing a lot of money to fake check scams. The median loss in 2019 was $1,988. That’s a lot of money for anyone to lose. But an FTC analysis published earlier this year showed that people in their twenties are more than twice as likely as people over 30 to report losing money to fake check scams.

Fake Check Scams Infographic

So how do you avoid a fake check scam? Never use money from a check to send gift cards, money orders, or wire money to someone. It’s always a scam. And, once you send the money or put it on a gift card and give someone the gift card PIN, it‘s like giving them cash. It’s almost impossible to get your money back.

Banks have to give you money from deposited checks within a few days. But if the check turns out to be a fake, they’ll make sure they get that money back from your account. The bottom line is, if someone sends you a check and tells you to send money by wire transfer or gift card — it’s a scam.

Spotted a scam like this? We want to hear about it. Let us know at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.

12 Amazing Tech Jobs and the Women Who Rock Them

12 Amazing Tech Jobs and the Women Who Rock Them

Learn about various careers in the IT industry and the women who excel at them. You can share these stories by downloading and distributing the eBook below across your organization and through your social media assets. Enjoy!

Excerpt:

Dr. Ware - 12 amazing ech Jobs for women“This is the first of a series that will explore amazing jobs in the tech industry and highlight the women who currently excel in those roles, with a wealth of examples to help guide you. If you are a woman trying to navigate career options, the high-tech industry is usually not the first place you might consider to be a natural pivot point. With that in mind, we have tried to be very diverse and thoughtful in the examples we have used to show you that working in the technology industry does not necessarily mean you must be a programmer writing code. There are many roles across the tech industry, such as sales, marketing, support, consulting, and recruiting, to name a few.

What I’ve learned …”

– Jenni Flinders, US Vice President
Partner Strategy and Programs
Microsoft

Download the eBook here

What Is a Denial of Service (DoS) Attack?

What Is a Denial of Service (DoS) Attack?

drware_blog-_dos_attack

The name of this attack, “denial of service” (DoS), refers to the intended result. Also known as a “distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack), these types of attacks attempt to make a Web site unresponsive, in other words to crash it. Of course the target can be any Internet site or service but the most likely targets are high-profile servers.

The perpetrators of these attacks usually flood the target with massive requests. The servers get overwhelmed and stop responding to legitimate requests. A “successful” denial of service attack forces the target computer to either reset or it consumes so much of the server’s resources that it can no longer provide service to its customers. These attacks are malicious, malevolent, and unethical. Perpetrators may be prosecuted under the laws of some countries.

For more technical information go to Wikipedia page Denial Of Service Attack.