President Joe Biden proposed a plan in 2022 to help people with low to middle incomes get rid of thousands of dollars in college debt.
However, the plan ran into a number of problems that made things confusing for people who have student loans.
Scammers have taken advantage of this lack of security by offering to forgive loans in exchange for money or personal information.
Danny Jenkins is a cybersecurity expert at ThreatLocker. He says that hackers often use student loans to get personal information and money.
Jenkins says, “It is much easier to trick someone.” “You only need to trick one out of every hundred people you talk to.”
Scammers often use urgent language in their texts, telling people to “call now” or that their “student loan repayment suspension ends soon.”
The Department of Education says that these words are instant red flags.
The department tells users that the loan forgiveness program is always free to join and will never use urgent messages or ask for fees.
Hackers have also found ways to get around email filters. Often, they use special text features to keep messages from getting straight to spam.
Jeremy Fuchs of Checkpoint says that in the past few weeks, their software has found over 7,500 of these scam emails aimed at people with student loans.
He tells borrowers to be careful with language that makes things seem urgent, because that is a common way to get people to make choices quickly.