Real job offer or scam?

The UIC Information Security team works diligently to mitigate and prevent cyber attacks, but some can occasionally slip through defenses. Learn how to spot a job scam email by keeping an eye out for common signs and immediate red flags.

Scam emails can come from a @uic.edu email address. Scammers use email spoofing methods to forge a UIC email address and make it appear as if the email is being sent by a UIC employee. Recipients may fall victim to these scams, believing it is coming from a legitimate UIC contact. Though identifying a scammer using a @uic.edu email may be difficult, there are a few signs you can look out for:

• Big payment for little work. An immediate red flag is when a scammer offers a large payment for very little work. Examples include: “$500 a week for working 1 hour per day, 2-3 times a week.” As the old saying goes, “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”
• Filled with typos and grammatical errors. Most of the time, though not always, scam emails will be written very poorly and contain typos and grammatical errors. In the email below, you can see the message is filled with grammatical errors.
• Asks you to reply and provide a non-UIC email. Scammers want you to send them your personal email so they can contact you outside your UIC email. This is because scammers want to avoid getting caught by our vigilant security team.
• Asks you to contact them at a different email address. Scammers will request that you contact them at a different email address rather than the original “From” email address. The scam email example below came from @uic.edu email but the scammer asked to be contacted at a hotmail address.

If you receive a suspicious email, do not reply, click on any links, or download any attachments. Forward the potential scam email to security@uic.edu immediately to help our security team keep the UIC community safe from cyber criminals.