Are email scams the new norm for Chapman students?

Graphic by Easton Clark, Photography Editor

As another school year begins, Chapman students and faculty face a returning issue: scams. 

Students have received a range of scams, including phishing emails, fraudulent Chapman checks, one-ring scams and fake job offers sent to both Chapman emails and personal devices. 

“I remember one that was a supposedly paid research opportunity,” said Chris Uy, a senior software engineering major. It wasn’t.

The University provides various resources to help identify trending email scams and inform students and faculty.

“We work with the Office of the Dean of Students to send regular reminders, social media posts, and we have a page dedicated to keeping track of the trending scams,” said Keith Barros, chief information security officer of Chapman’s Information Systems and Technology (IS&T). 

Additionally, the online training and awareness program helps students and faculty recognize phishing emails. Phishing scams appear to be from a reputable source to gain the user's trust and eventually gain personal information such as emails, passwords or credit card numbers. 

“We have an Incident Response procedure for scams and malicious emails,” said Barros. “It is very effective, and we did see a significant reduction in scams and phishing attempts.”

Barros told The Panther their email filtering system catches 99.9% of “bad” emails, but job scams or text-only scams are harder to catch due to their inconsistencies.

Although some students have seen the notices in Price’s weekly emails, warnings directly from IS&T are becoming less common.  

“Every once in a while, I will get an email (from IS&T) that tells me to look out for scams,” said Emily Watanaponges, a junior sociology major. 

However, the IS&T team is trying to become more present in student outreach as early as orientation.

“We participate in every tabling event we can to share information about trending scams and security,” said Barros. “We love partnering with the Student Government Association (SGA) president and did so in the past for raising awareness about the most dangerous scams.”

Not only are students at risk, but faculty are as well. 

“We schedule presentations for key departments and faculty where we discuss phishing emails and scams to keep them informed,” Barros told The Panther. 

The presentations are not the only experience faculty get; IS&T will also send out fake phishing emails. 

“Our Online Training and Awareness tools allow us to send simulated phish emails and then train the people who fell for a simulated phish,” said Barros. “We do this every other month.”

IS&T last sent out an email on July 14 to alert students to scams that were offering fake jobs to students. In that email, IS&T linked to a blog post from the department to alert students of potential scams. 

The most recent scam blog post from IS&T is about one-ring scams. These scams work by calling a number and then immediately hanging up. If the user calls back, the scammer connects them to an intonation number that will require payment per minute. 

The blog lists area codes that are at a high risk of being one-ring scams, such as Argentina, the British Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, Sierra Leone and Mauritania. 

While scams might be a new norm for students and faculty at Chapman, the university has provided optional courses and resources to help both students and faculty identify and protect themselves from scams this school year. 

“Information security is ever evolving,” Barrios said. “(But) our department is staying ahead of technological trends.”