Online Coronavirus Scams to Avoid and the Red Flags that Give Them Away

0
400

As people still have fears about the coronavirus, cybercriminals will still attempt to exploit those fears.

This week, insurance agent World Insurance Associates published a report on scams to avoid during the pandemic.

Those scams include smishing, vishing and phishing, consistent with the corporate .

Smishing, consistent with World Insurance, uses text messages to send victims links to websites, email addresses or phone numbers which will trigger malware if they’re clicked.

Hackers that use vishing exploit voice Internet Protocol (VoIP) and broadcasting services, consistent with World Insurance.

By vishing, cybercriminals can “entice victims to call certain numbers and provides out sensitive, personal information,” the report said.

Phishing is when hackers use email or malicious websites to access personal information, consistent with World Insurance.

Many times, cybercriminals send emails that appear to be from a trustworthy organization — either a financial company that needs account information or charities and other organizations around specific events or times of year.

Some phishing red flags to seem out for, consistent with World Insurance, include suspicious mailing addresses (since the e-mail address may appear legitimate), generic greetings, poor grammar or syntax and suspicious attachments.

World Insurance also reported that another red flag is spoofed hyperlinks and websites. to inform if a link is spoofed or not, hover your cursor over a link — don’t click thereon — and see if the particular link matches the text. If the text and link don’t match, that’s a spoofed link.