Good afternoon,
IT has received several reports of a fresh wave of phishing messages impersonating GHC employees in order to trick people into purchasing gift cards and sending the codes to the scammers. Do not reply to these messages or share your contact information with them. Georgia Highlands College employees will NEVER ask you to email or text gift card codes as a form of payment or for participation in a student event or ceremony.
While not new, gift card scams are on the rise and can result in a victim losing hundreds or thousands of dollars. In a typical scam, a student receives an email or a text message that pretends to be from a senior figure or person of authority at GHC. It asks them to buy gift cards and send them photos of the backs, for reasons that will supposedly be explained later. The scammer may ask you to communicate with them via text message or over the phone.
How to Spot a Gift Card Scam
Inspect the sender’s email address to confirm it’s actually coming from that person. Scammers will often send the email from a random email account and change the Display Name of the email address to either your club advisor, a business office employee, or someone in GHC’s leadership team. If the message came in the form of an unfamiliar text message, reach out to the supposed sender through a trusted channel such as an email address found in our online employee directory.
(Sample Fake Sender)A Gift Card Scam Email Message will:
- Indicate some level of urgency, such as indicating they are currently busy or are heading into a meeting and need your help ASAP.
- Possibly include a subject line of “are you are available?” or “URGENT REQUEST”
- Ask you to do them a “favor”.
- Ask you to purchase numerous gift cards with the promise of reimbursement.
- Ask for you to scratch off the activation codes on the back and provide them over email, text, or by phone.
- Possibly have typos and grammatical errors.
- Possibly not include the sender signature, but rather “Sent from my iPad” in order to make it appear as if the person is mobile and away from their desk.
Report Gift Card Scams To Us
You can report phishing and suspicious activity in your myGHC student email by forwarding those email messages to rt@highlands.edu