Phone numbers EUR staff being used for phone scams

Erasmus University has warned its employees about calls from scammers, similar to a warning issued by the police. The way this scam works is that criminals pretend they are calling on behalf of an organisation such as EUR or the Tax and Customs Administration. During the call, they try to get access to your money or personal information.

In these attempts, cyber criminals use real telephone numbers belonging to organisations, making it easy to mislead their victims. The scammers often ask their victims to download an app, transfer an outstanding payment, or state their BSN number over the phone.

Spoofing

When scammers use call spoofing, it appears as if the call is originating from a legitimate organisation. Spoofing uses your telephone’s number recognition feature that tells you the telephone number calling you belongs to an organisation or company. That’s why it can appear as if an EUR employee is calling, even though that employee is not involved in any way.

University spokesperson Rateb Abawi hopes that employees will be extra cautious when it comes to these scams. For security reasons, it cannot be revealed whether or not there have already been any call spoofing victims at EUR. “But as the saying goes, forewarned is forearmed,” says Abawi.

Use another platform

In addition to being extra cautious, employees are asked to immediately report suspicious calls to the Service Desk. If you suspect you are speaking to a scammer on the phone, the advised course of action is to say you will call back through another platform such as Teams, or that the caller should contact you by e-mail.