Scam emails continue to infiltrate Northeastern Outlook inboxes several months after The Huntington News initially reported on the issue.
In the past several months, multiple students received a scam email that appeared to be from a representative of Habitat for Humanity, an international non-profit housing organization focused on providing affordable housing solutions. The email included a document detailing employment information and was supposedly signed by Annabeth Harry, who claimed to be an administrator for the company.
Christian Schiavone, who was at the time manager of marketing and communications for Habitat for Humanity Greater Boston, debunked the email in a statement to The News.
“Unfortunately, this scam is attempting to capitalize on Habitat for Humanity’s reputation as a leader in building affordable homes to trick people into providing sensitive personal information,” Schiavone said.
Despite the university adding additional security settings to university email addresses and a warning banner on emails from unfamiliar senders, scam emails are still trickling into students’ inboxes. In response to a list of questions about what Northeastern is doing to protect students from scam employment opportunities, the university directed The News to a page on the Information Technology Services website that claims updated security settings blocked 6.3 million malicious emails in January and February.
On March 23, multiple students received an email from Klaus Leven, who claimed to be a representative from the human resources department of Rebuilding Together, offering recipients a two-week-long position in which employees would earn $550 for three hours of work a week.
The email address from which the scam came was an “@blg.de” address, a domain that belongs to BLG Logistics, a German logistics company. BLG Logistics and Leven did not respond to a request for comment.
Max Gouttebroze, vice president of marketing and communications for Rebuilding Together Boston, told The News in an email that Leven is not affiliated with the organization and the email did not come from the organization.
Several students received another “Rebuilding Together” email April 20, formatted the same way as the previous email. It was supposedly sent by Nitesh Kandara, with an “@geo.tv” domain.
The senders in the Rebuilding Together email instruct students to reply with their full names, mobile numbers and home addresses, and to do so using a personal email, not their Northeastern address.
In addition to email scams from international domains, students are still receiving scams from “@northeastern.edu” senders.
On April 14, some students received an email supposedly from Amy Bass-Ferris, associate director of experiential learning at D’Amore-McKim School of Business, offering a part-time employment opportunity with Project HOPE, a global health non-governmental agency. It was formatted like most other scam emails, offering high pay for minimal work.
Northeastern IT Services maintains a site called the “Phish Bowl,” a database of all confirmed phishing and scam emails. The database currently lists five confirmed email scams, including the Rebuilding Together email from Nitesh Kandara.
Bass declined to comment on the Project HOPE email, but it is one of the confirmed scams in the Phish Bowl database. No other email scams The News has reported on are included in the database.
Though email scams are still reaching students’ inboxes, many now have a banner at the top alerting that the sender comes from an unfamiliar address or an external source, The Huntington News found. However, this banner does not appear above the scams that come from “@northeastern.edu” domains.
“The banner is a standard Microsoft option intended to make users aware that the sender is not someone they regularly receive email from,” the university wrote in a statement to The News.
