Phishing scams often rely on using topics that would make people want to click on an email even if they are not entirely sure of whether or not doing so would be safe. Since covid tends to be the kind of topic that most people take very seriously indeed, a lot of phishing scammers have attempted to use it in an attempt to entice people into handing over their personal details and the unfortunate truth is that these scams have actually seen a pretty high rate of success so far.
One of the recent changes that has brought about a massive increase in these kinds of phishing attempts is that many insurance providers have started paying for covid testing kits that can be used at home. This has made covid testing an even bigger topic for some, and malicious actors are clearly willing to try and use that to their advantage as much as they possibly can.
A really common scam that a lot of people are starting to see involves them getting an email saying that they have yet to pay for covid tests that they ordered. This will likely contain a PayPal account that the recipient is supposed to send the payment to, and suffice it to say that this is a scam by any measure. Another common scam involves the sender posing as a medical professional or someone else that is offering either covid tests or covid treatments, and they often ask for really sensitive information such as medical insurance details to get the job done.
Giving this information over would be a truly massive breach of security, and many users are already suffering after falling for these kinds of scams. A recent study has shown that such scams have seen an incredible 521% increase in January alone, and with the state of covid and all related topics in a constant state of flux it seems more or less likely that such scams will continue to be a problem. People are clearly worried about this subject, and phishing attacks are continually exploiting it because they know it is a really reliable way to victimize someone without too much effort.
Read next: Security Breaches are still the biggest nightmare for companies as 40 billion records were exposed in 2021
One of the recent changes that has brought about a massive increase in these kinds of phishing attempts is that many insurance providers have started paying for covid testing kits that can be used at home. This has made covid testing an even bigger topic for some, and malicious actors are clearly willing to try and use that to their advantage as much as they possibly can.
A really common scam that a lot of people are starting to see involves them getting an email saying that they have yet to pay for covid tests that they ordered. This will likely contain a PayPal account that the recipient is supposed to send the payment to, and suffice it to say that this is a scam by any measure. Another common scam involves the sender posing as a medical professional or someone else that is offering either covid tests or covid treatments, and they often ask for really sensitive information such as medical insurance details to get the job done.
Giving this information over would be a truly massive breach of security, and many users are already suffering after falling for these kinds of scams. A recent study has shown that such scams have seen an incredible 521% increase in January alone, and with the state of covid and all related topics in a constant state of flux it seems more or less likely that such scams will continue to be a problem. People are clearly worried about this subject, and phishing attacks are continually exploiting it because they know it is a really reliable way to victimize someone without too much effort.
Read next: Security Breaches are still the biggest nightmare for companies as 40 billion records were exposed in 2021