Nov 20, 2024
Dear BPN Tutors,
We wanted to let you know that two tutors who subscribe to BPN, David C. and Teri G., told us about suspicious texts and emails they received this week from people who said they found them on Berkeley Parents Network. Scroll down to see excerpts. Be on the lookout for suspicious messages like this. See About Tutor Scams for more information.
Question for you: Do you think tutor posts on the BPN website should continue to be publicly available? Or should we restrict access to subscribers only?
Public posts have a bigger audience - anyone who googles a phrase like "Math tutor in Oakland" will find you in BPN's tutor listing. But the tradeoff is that your contact information is available to everyone on the internet, including scammers. We could make a change so tutor posts on our site can only be viewed by BPN subscribers, which would virtually eliminate scammer risk, but your post would have a smaller audience (currently 45,000 parents). What do you think?
Let us know by replying back to this email or you can emailinfo [at] berkeleyparentsnetwork.org
Teri sent us this excerpt:
Scammer: "Hello Teri, I am looking for a French teacher for my child. Are you still doing this job?"
Teri: "I don't do business over text. Where did you get my contact info? Please use my email and provide me with more details."
Scammer: "I saw you on your official website. Sorry, I don't communicate through emails. We can communicate through WhatsApp because I spend a lot of time using WhatsApp. My business partners and family members also use WhatsApp to communicate with me. We can get to know each other through WhatsApp so that I can feel at ease when my child learns knowledge from you."
David wrote:
"Hi. I got a scammy message from a person who got my contact information from BPN. My phone number was the email subject and they asked generic questions which meant they hadn’t bothered to read my post. I’m ignoring and blocking this person but wanted to pass it along in case others are receiving these. Name on the email is Yiyi Huang, 858-761-3364"
Here's what the scammer wrote:
"David C___ Hi! I found you through the Berkeley Parent Network. What age groups do you teach? What subjects do you primarily teach?"
Reply back with any questions or comments.
Ginger Ogle
Director, Berkeley Parents Network
info [at] berkeleyparentsnetwork.org | https://www.berkeleyparentsnetwork.org
BPN is an online nonprofit network for 45,000 parents in the SF Bay Area
Responses:
I received the same thing that David did in the last 24 hours. Thank you for alerting us. Will think about my answer to your question.
Hi there, I've gotten a couple of these also. Blocked the numbers.
As to not making tutor profiles public...that's a tough one. I'm not certain I'm getting business through public searches - when folks tell me they found me on BPN I just assume they are subscribers...but maybe not?I got the same emailFrom Yiyi Huang
Yeah - I got the same messages from someone.
Jeez, people. As if teachers are going to be a good hit? smh.I would prefer that tutor profiles stay available to everyone. I've gotten a lot of contacts from real parents who saw me on BPN without being subscribers.Perhaps you can recommend that tutors use a Google Voice number instead of their real phone number to screen calls. You can set up a free Google Voice number that essentially forwards to your real phone number so you can still get contacts without exposing your permanent phone number.
As a long time tutor, over 20 years now, I've connected with numerous parents through the amazing BPN, who were not subscribers...so I would appreciate keeping it open. Some of these parents became subscribers also after desiring a more in depth BPN experience.
Generally, the scammers become quite obvious, and I've had some try, but fairly soon, they show their inherent Scam nature. I think these scammers exist as a potential problem in many professions, and it's just something to learn to strategically deal with.
I like having the information be public, personally.
Thank you for sharing about scams, though.Hi,
I received the same message from Yiyi Huang!Many thanks.From my perspective, restricting these posts to the BPN community would have meant I never could have gotten my business off the ground. As long as we are aware of potential scammers, and are always proactive, I think tutors can generally protect themselves. Moreover, our names and contact information are all probably part of the dark web since so many large institutions have been scammed. So, realistically, and in my opinion, it doesn’t make sense to restrict postings.
HelloI would prefer that my tutoring info be available only to BPN subscribers. I get very few inquiries anyway, and most are scams.I got the " Yiyi Huang" msg recently.When these inquiries don't start with the student's age, year in school, and subject, I usually just ignore them.Hi BPN,Even though I’m one of the people mentioned in this email, almost all the tutoring business I have gotten from BPN is from non-BPN members, so I hope you’ll continue letting the posts be publicly available.I also got an email from Yiyi Huang with similar content. It didn’t strike me as spam or a scam, though — just someone looking for information.
I occasionally get scammer emails. If it's very scammy, I just ignore it. If it is iffy, I link my website and say read my website
It is not a big issue just part of any advertising.
Please keep it publicly available.
Thanks for your post about the tutor scams. Well, I have gotten only a few contacts from the ad I have on BPN, (and I'm sure it has to do with having limited display of my teaching on my website.) My vote would be to have the ads limited to people within the BPN community. But if you keep it to the public, I would be ok with that too.Curious what the others say..Hello,Yes I got the same email from Yiyi Huang. We emailed back and forth, but they didn't answer my questions so I stopped responding...I'd say leave it the way it is, and just keep letting us know specific scammer names.thanks so much for checking.Hi,Thanks for asking for our input.I've been contacted by scammers pretending to be looking for my services--unrelated to BPN. I'd prefer to reach a wider audience rather than limit the outreach to just BPN members, as I have to be vigilant for scammers anyway--and so far, thank goodness, their approaches are clumsy!We are all "out there" in the on-line world and I feel it is on me, rather than BPN, to protect myself. If every valuable website I interacted with limited my access to families that could use my services, that would be pretty limiting for me and for parents.Thanks for the great job you all do at BPN!
For more information, see About Tutor Scams