In a local NBC 10 Boston news segment, anchor Priscilla and reporter Michael Rosenfield report that Malden police are warning high school students about a phishing/job scam. The scam uses emails that appear to come from Malden school staff, promising work‑from‑home positions that pay $300 a week. Two Malden High School students describe how they received the emails, signed up, and later learned the offers were fake. After responding, scammers requested personal information and, in some cases, threatened violence. Cybersecurity expert Robert Siciliano comments that teenagers often lack the skepticism needed to spot such scams and raises concerns that the school’s email system may have been compromised, though the district has not responded. Police are investigating and urging students to avoid sharing personal data.
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Warning from police in Malden. High school students say they got emails that looked like it was from school staff members promising them jobs. They soon realized it was all fake. Our NBC 10's Michael Rosenfield joining us live in Malden with those details tonight. Michael, how'd they figure this one out?
Well, Priscilla, students say the emails seem to be very legitimate, but investigators say this is all a scam, and they're warning students to be careful when it comes to sharing any personal information. These two Malden High School students among those targeted by fraud. Both of them received this email promising jobs working from home and $300 a week.
Basically like giving us a job opportunity, which we found out was fake and stuff like that. Like me included, I think I signed up, I did sign up for it.
But police say this is a scam that's been targeting students in Malden and they're warning students not to fall for it.
I told a couple of my friends about it and they heard about it and they were like, oh yeah, it's fake. And I'm like, oh damn, really? I was kind of disappointed, but you know, I was trying to make the $300 a week.
The email appears to be legitimate, the messages seemingly sent from Malden School email accounts.
Teenagers these days are much like senior citizens where they aren't quite savvy enough to recognize risk in such a way where they are cynical, uh, or skeptical with those inbound communications, and they just generally automatically trust.
Cybersecurity expert Robert Siciliano wonders if the school system got hacked.
Did they get access to a school server? Uh, how did they get the data? Uh, what— where did they get their intelligence? That concerns me the most.
Police say after students responded to the email, the scammers would ask for personal information, and if they didn't comply, they were sometimes threatened with violence.
I feel a lot of young kids and young people like myself are very easily influenced, and that the fact that they try and take advantage of that is something that's not right to do.
When scammers are going after children, essentially, and they're using threats of violence. We haven't seen a lot of that, uh, and they've taken it up to another level that, uh, parents should be concerned.
We did reach out to the school district tonight to find out if the school system was hacked, but so far there's been no response. Live in Malden, Michael Rosenfield, NBC 10 Boston.
