What are the Tech Scams Targeting LRCCD Students?

On Feb. 6, Los Rios IT sent out an email to all Los Rios students warning them of an increase in fraudulent emails and online forms attempting to impersonate the district or campus. This isn’t the first time the Los Rios Community College District has had problems with scams. In April 2025, LRCCD sent out an email warning students and staff of a phishing campaign that targeted student’s financial aid. 

Phishing is a form of social engineering where scammers pretend to be a credible entity in order to manipulate users to interact with messages, emails or links that are designed to gather personal information from those users.

At LRCCD, these scams come in the form of fraudulent emails that threaten to delete users’ Los Rios accounts and compromise financial aid. These messages will often link to forms that request a user’s Los Rios WID number, password, phone number or multifactor authentication code, according to an email from Los Rios IT.

In an interview with The Current, Leon Cox, a senior IT technician at Los Rios, says that with the advent of artificial intelligence, phishing scams have gotten more advanced. 

“It’s becoming really more difficult to address these phishers becoming more sophisticated, so, IT, we’re going to continue to, you know, evolve, in that aspect to be able to help out users more, to protect against those types of attacks,” Cox said. 

According to Cox, one popular form of phishing affecting Los Rios students is a scam involving Handshake, a career development platform for students. Attackers will impersonate an employer through Handshake and send false job opportunities to students. Vulnerable students will click on harmful links and enter sensitive information in the hopes of securing a job or internship but end up victims of a nefarious phishing plot. 

According to Kaitlyn Colignon, ARC’s public information officer, it isn’t unusual to see an uptick in phishing or scam attempts at the beginning of a new semester, when students are expecting official communications from the district. Despite this, phishing can happen at any point in the semester, and students should stay alert and cautious of any fraudulent or deceptive messages or emails. Any of these messages should be reported through Service Central or contact the IT Help Desk at [email protected]. 

In the email Los Rios IT sent to all Los Rios students informing them of the increase in fraudulent emails and online forms, they also included important reminders and safety tips when dealing with possible suspicious messages. The email reminds students that Los Rios will never ask them to enter their password into an email link or online form, and that common sources of scams come from non-Los Rios email addresses or compromised Los Rios student accounts. Students can also review the Information Security webpage to learn more about how they can stay vigilant in spotting possible scams or phishing attempts.