Journalist Falls Prey to Massive Phishing Attack, Files Police Complaint after Fraudulent Job Offer from Harvard University

A renowned TV journalist on Thursday revealed that she has fallen into the trap of a “sophisticated and coordinated” phishing attack. Delhi-based journalist Nidhi Razdan took to Twitter to explain that last year she was offered a place at Harvard University as an Associate Professor of Journalism after which she resigned from NDTV, where she was an anchor.

But later when she reached out to Harvard University to join the post, she found out no such position had been offered. Soon after realising that she has become a victim of phishing attack, Razdan immediately lodged a police complaint and wrote to Harvard University.

Razdan said that she was made to believe that her tenure at the university was to start in September 2020, but had been pushed to January 2021 due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

“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. I had been given to believe that I would be joining the University in September 2020. While I was making preparations to take up my new assignment, I was later told that due to the ongoing pandemic, my classes would commence in January 2021. Along with these delays, I began noticing a number of administrative anomalies in the process being described to me,” said the journalist, who formerly worked with NDTV, in a statement posted on Twitter.

“At first, I had dismissed these anomalies as being reflective of the new normal being dictated by the pandemic, but recently the representations being made to me were of an even more disquieting nature. As a result, I reached out to senior authorities at Harvard University for clarity. Upon their request, I shared some of the correspondence that I believed I had received from the University,” she added.

“I did not, in fact, receive an offer by Harvard University to join their faculty as an Associate Professor of Journalism. 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,” she said.

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