The rising scale of online scams has taken the world by storm. Where the technological advancements have eased our lives, they have also paused a threat to our cyber-security. Sometimes, the scammers are so cunning and technically sound that even the most tech-savvy people fall prey to it.
Such an incident occurred with a seasoned Indian journalist Nidhi Razdan who was tricked into quit her decades-old job to get a teaching fake role at Harvard University. She has lodged a police complaint saying that she has become a victim of a ‘coordinated and sophisticated’ phishing attack online.
Having worked with NDTV for 21 years, Razdan left her job to take the role of an Associate Professor of Journalism at Harvard. However, after speaking to the higher authorities, she learned about the hoax.
“I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty as an Associate Professor of Journalism,” she said on Twitter.
I have been the victim of a very serious phishing attack. I’m putting this statement out to set the record straight about what I’ve been through. I will not be addressing this issue any further on social media. pic.twitter.com/bttnnlLjuh
— Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) January 15, 2021
“The perpetrators of this attack used clever forgeries and misrepresentations to obtain access to my personal data and communications and may have also gained access to my devices and my email/social media accounts.”
The senior journalist was so excited by the offer that she dropped her guard and did not listen to the cautions about the scam. Yes, Nidhi was warned by a Twitter user who had pointed out back in September 2020 that Razdan’s name did ‘not appear in the Master Faculty List yet.’
Nidhi was alarmed by the scale of the hoax and has requested both the university and the police to look into the incident.
Some users on Twitter were quick to mock her on the fraud while others were more understanding and supported her stance, including Joshua Benton, the former Director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University.
Surprised with what Razdan revealed, Joshua clarified that there is no faculty at Harvard by the name ‘department of journalism’ and hence requires no professors for the course.
Wow — this is awful.
For the record, @Harvard has no school of journalism, no department of journalism, and no professors of journalism.
(It does have @niemanfdn! But we have no faculty and no classes. And it does have @ShorensteinCtr, but no journalism-specific faculty.) https://t.co/AiMYkcrB6Q
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) January 15, 2021
He described the incident as “awful” but clarified that although the university is home to the Nieman Journalism Lab, it does not have a “journalism-specific faculty or classes”.
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