Graduation is a significant milestone in anybody’s life, however, students are being warned against posting graduation selfies over fears innocent photos may be aiding criminal counterfeiters.
The warning has come from Jayne Rowley, director of the Higher Education Degree Datacheck (HEDD). The service aims to protect the legitimacy of degrees and other higher education qualifications by authenticating universities and other awarding bodies and allowing employers to verify a candidate’s academic credentials.
Rowley has acknowledged the personal importance of graduation ceremonies and the “temptation” to share achievements on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media sites. However, logos, crests, signatories, stamps, holograms, and wording can be easily copied onto fake certificates and passed off as genuine to unwitting employers, HEDD has cautioned.
Issuing the warning on HEDD’s blog, Rowley described how degree certificates contain personal information, such as full names, dates of birth, places of study, and year of graduation. She added: “Information like this can be used to piece together someone’s identity for fraud and is as precious and private as a passport, a driving licence, or bank details. None of us would put our passports online and we should treat certificates the same way.”
Because of this threat to the legitimacy of qualifications, institutions are being warned of the dangers and have been asked to convey the information to their graduands. Rowley continued: “We’re contacting all university social media teams to ask them to get the message out to their students and also not to retweet pictures of their graduates holding certificates.
“Significant time and financial investment goes into getting a degree certificate - don’t throw that away by giving unscrupulous people a free pass to a graduate job.”
Last year, HEDD issued a list of tips for employers when it comes to spotting fraudulent qualifications. The easiest way to spot a bogus document is to look out for questionable spelling, “a common indication of a fake certificate,” said the warning.
Misspelling of words such as “Fisrt” instead of “First,” or substitutions like “Autumn” for “Fall” are common mistakes employers should look out for.
