• Applications for NSFAS funding opened this week.
• The official account for the programme shared a warning of a fake message.
• Funding recipients are once again warned to be vigilant.

Earlier this week applications opened for the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) and, as students pour in to get their education funded, a warning has appeared for a new scam going around targeting them.

The official Twitter account for NSFAS has shared this information on Twitter along with a screenshot of the text that is going around trying to trick victims into handing over their personal details.

What’s interesting about the text as shown below is that “www.nsfas.org.za” is the official website for the programme. The problem comes in the fact that the website URL is a hyperlink to another page.

While some websites will automatically convert a URL to a hyperlink you can click on, it’s all too easy to write out a URL that actually goes a to a different site entirely.

For example we can write www.google.com but, once you click on that link, you’re instead taken to Bing. A truly dastardly trick on our part but a good example of how easy this is.

Sending victims to websites that look legit is an all too common trick employed by criminals as a way to steal your details. These criminals can easily create a website that looks like the one you’re intending to visit but is very much not. Here they control everything and interacting with the fake website in any capacity can be harmful.

The misdirection of the scammers stating that the old system no longer works is also important here as, when potential victims visit the fake site and find that things look different, this can be explained away by a “new system” that has been put in place.

These scams are so common that NSFAS has to continually issue these warnings like this, this and this as some recent examples.

As always the advice remains the same: never share your personal details with anyone and only use official sites that are connected to organisations, never anything you see being shared on social media or through direct messages on chat platforms.

FAKE NEWS ALERT: Please note the attached message is FALSE! Do not click on any link asking you to recreate your myNSFAS account and remember to never share your personal details with anyone. Please follow our communication platforms for factual updates. pic.twitter.com/MfKG5nSZJj

— NSFAS (@myNSFAS) September 28, 2022