A prominent TV news anchor became the latest victim of a sophisticated and coordinated phishing scam. On Friday, former NDTV anchor Nidhi Razdan on her Twitter profile shared the shocking details of how she fell for a "very serious phishing attack" that led her to believe she had been offered a teaching job at Harvard University.
Razdan had announced on June 13 that she'd he quitting NDTV to join Harvard as an Associate Professor of Journalism. She had been a part of NDTV for 21 years and was in the midst of preparing to take up her new role this month after she was led to believe that she would be joining Harvard in September last year.
"Along with these delays, I began noticing a number of administrative anomalies in the process being described to me. 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.," Razdan said in a statement issued on Twitter on Friday.
Razdan said she then reached out to senior authorities at Harvard University to get some clarity on the matter. After sharing some of the correspondence that she thought was from the University, she realized she had been a victim of a phishing scam.
"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," Nidhi said in her statement.
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
A police complaint has also been lodged and Razdan intimidated Harvard authorities to take serious note of the matter.
Reactions to phishing attack
Job scams in India are prevalent and many victims have fallen for them. Razdan, being a senior journalist, too fell for the scam, but netizens were both supportive and critical. One user pointed out about that Harvard doesn't even have a department of journalism, nor an undergrad degree course. There is, however, a Masters in Journalism as part of its Extension School.
Here are some more reactions:
