Scammers Are Creating Fake Students on Harvard.edu and Using Them to Shill Brands

"According to his bio on Harvard.edu, Mikao John was an erudite scholar: a medical student at the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology who'd studied statistics and biochemistry at Yale and published research in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine," reports Futurism: John was also a prolific author of blog posts on Harvard's site... But despite that veneer of academic authenticity, his posts didn't sound much like medical research. nstead, John's recent works carried titles like "KeefX.co: The Cannabis Fintech Company that Provides $1M in Funding a Month," which took the form of an extremely flattering article about a startup that provides financial services to weed businesses, and "Idahome Solar Makes Switching to Solar Power in Idaho a No-Brainer," which praised the "client-first mentality" and "incredible financing program" of a seemingly random solar panel company in Idaho.

As it turns out, there is no Harvard student by the name of Mikao John. Instead, a scammer invented that persona — and, alarmingly, managed to obtain the credentials to insert him into Harvard's web system — in order to sell SEO-friendly backlinks, and the prestige of being hyped up by someone at one of the world's most distinguished universities, to marketing firms with publicity-hungry clients.

The practice of scammers cooking up fake Harvard students to shill brands on the university's site appears to be widespread. In response to questions from Futurism, Harvard removed the Mikao John profile as well as about two dozen similar accounts being used for the same purpose... Swathes of Harvard.edu have become a spammer free-for-all where fake students and other accounts hawk an endless parade of dubious stuff: online casinos, synthetic urine, real estate in Florida, CBD, [42 more examples deleted] and many more incongruous yet trashy brands and services...

Overall, it felt as though if a reporter hadn't been sending numerous emails, the fake students probably would have been allowed to continue posting indefinitely.
Harvard eventually told the reporter that the scammers were signing up for their online classes, then using the email address they received to infiltrate the university's blogging platforms (writing fake posts about everything from bitcoin to concealed carry holsters and even bouncy castles.)

Ironically, Harvard's official motto (first adopted in 1643) is "Veritas" — the Latin word for truth.

Maybe you should do something about thatâ

[Macdude]

Harvard eventually told the reporter that the scammers were signing up for their online classes, then using the email address they received to infiltrate the university's blogging platforms (writing fake posts about everything from bitcoin to concealed carry holsters and even bouncy castles.)

Hey Harvard, maybe you should do something about that?

Re:Maybe you should do something about thatâ

[ufgrat]

If they're taking online classes, they're a student. So technically, not a scam.

Re:

[freeze128]

Harvard taking action could be as simple as putting a tag next to the username on each post the student makes indicating if they are an online student or otherwise. That would be enough for people to make an informed decision as to the authenticity of the post.

ok bud

[Anonymous Coward]

If Harvard is treating people in their open-to-everyone internet lectures the same (in some important respects) as the 4.6% of applicants who get admitted they are going to suffer serious reputational loss, this is idiotic.

Re:

[ufgrat]

I do not disagree-- they're certainly allowing the "online only" students to exploit the bejesus out of the name "Harvard", and they definitely need to fine-tune their access. The example given in the OP is obviously fraud.

It's just sloppy journalism.

Low threshold for getting a Harvard email address?

[MastaBaba]

I follow a paid online class at Harvard, can log into the online student management system, but did not also receive a Harvard email address. Clearly, I'm doing something wrong.

Re:

[extra88]

I don't think you need a Harvard email address to use any of the exploited platforms, you just need an active account in the single-sign-on system called HarvardKey.

Hahaha

[RightwingNutjob]

On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.

Back in my day, my university didn't hand out generic @university.edu emails. They handed out @school.university.edu emails. So if you took extension classes or online classes, your email and your personal webspace would show it.

Re:Hahaha

[extra88]

I don't think you need a Harvard email address to use any of the exploited platforms, you just need an active account in the single-sign-on system called HarvardKey.

Harvard email addresses are not all @harvard.edu, most include the School in the domain name, as your university did. I know faculty/staff can get @harvard.edu aliases, I don't know if any students can.

Anyone taking an Extension School course can request a Google Apps for Harvard [harvard.edu] account, which includes a @g.harvard.edu Gmail address, but it's only active while you're registered for a course (semester ends, account access ends unless you're registered for a course in the next semester).

Faculty, staff, and students in some other parts of Harvard can also have a @g.harvard.edu account in addition to their School account. Some may prefer to use it because they prefer Gmail over Outlook and/or because it integrates better with Google Calendar, Drive, etc. This fact makes the email address domain name not a great way to differentiate people signed up for one Extension course from "real" students or people employed by the University. So what? An email address is not a validation tool and attending or working at Harvard does not mean someone is great, or even good.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had Harvard and MIT addresses, as a student and staff member. Both institutions have been pretty careless about them. The worst cases are when someone from one school thinks it's OK to abuse and steal services from the other school, which is what Aaron Swarz did: he had Harvard ID, and access to his the JSTOR databases from his office as a lecturer at Harvard, but chose to plant his laptop and hard drives to copy all of JSTOR in an MIT wiring closet. That way, MIT staff had to clean up his mess when he

Re: Hahaha

[RightwingNutjob]

Let me guess...the business school went with Exchange...because Wall Street uses Exchange...therefore the rest of the university has to use Exchange too...

Re:

[extra88]

The Business School does it's own thing, it doesn't dictate what the rest of the University does and often doesn't go along with the rest. The Business School is unusual in that it gives students accounts on Exchange, most of the rest of the University uses Exchange for only faculty/staff, not because the B-School did but because a University is an "enterprise" and Exchange is useful enterprise software.

And for many years, the Exchange instances I was aware of did have SMTP and IMAP gateways enabled, no nee

Extraordinary effort

[Anonymous Coward]

Do note on the Harvard page archived and linked in the original post, the highly convincing email address "[e-mail]".

"Veritas" — the Latin word for truth

[weeboo0104]

It now joins the veracity of "Pravda" and Donald Trump's Social media platform.

Sadly, I think the bar for "truth" has been lowered.

This is why we can't have nice things

[Paul Burney]

My alma mater Boston College just got rid of alumni email addresses ending in bc.edu. It's probably for the best; the last time I used it was years ago to sign up for a college student Amazon Prime account that I shouldn't have had access to.