{"id":37,"date":"2020-03-07T09:24:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-07T09:24:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/plymouth\/?p=37"},"modified":"2023-02-21T09:29:00","modified_gmt":"2023-02-21T09:29:00","slug":"victims-of-coronavirus-scams-leave-uk-victims-seriously-out-of-pocket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/victims-of-coronavirus-scams-leave-uk-victims-seriously-out-of-pocket\/","title":{"rendered":"Victims of coronavirus scams leave UK victims seriously out of pocket"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victims of scams related to the coronavirus outbreak lost nearly \u20ac1 million in February, according to the UK&#8217;s fraud and cybercrime centre.<\/p>\n<p>In a warning to the public, Action Fraud UK said fraudsters conned people out of more than \u00a3800,000 (\u20ac918,000) in the month, using the COVID-19 crisis to concoct phishing email scams.<\/p>\n<p>It said since the start of February, 21 cases of fraud have been identified where coronavirus was mentioned.<\/p>\n<p>Ten were reported by victims who were trying to buy facemasks from fraudulent sellers, with one victim losing more than \u00a315,000 on a purchase of masks which was never delivered.<\/p>\n<p>Others were victims of coronavirus-themed phishing emails, where people are tricked into opening malicious attachments or divulging login information.<\/p>\n<p>Some fraudsters have been pretending to be from research organisations associated with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).<\/p>\n<p>WHO has itself warned people of malicious emails appearing to be from the organisation.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;WHO is aware of suspicious email messages attempting to take advantage of the 2019 novel coronavirus emergency,&#8221; it says on its website, warning the emails ask for information such as usernames and passwords, or include malicious links or attachments.<\/p>\n<h2>How to steer clear of online scams<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t click on links or attachments in suspicious emails, says Action Fraud<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t reveal any personal or financial details during unsolicited messages or calls<\/li>\n<li>WHO says you can verify the sender by checking the email address &#8211; an official WHO email will be sent only from an address ending in @who.int<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t feel under pressure to reveal any information &#8211; cybercriminals use emergencies such as coronavirus to scare people into making rash decisions<\/li>\n<li>The WHO also advises, if you think you may have given personal information mistakenly to a scammer, change your credentials immediately<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victims of scams related to the coronavirus outbreak lost nearly \u20ac1 million in February, according to the UK&#8217;s fraud and cybercrime centre. In a warning to the public, Action Fraud UK said fraudsters conned people out of more than \u00a3800,000 (\u20ac918,000) in the month, using the COVID-19 crisis to concoct phishing email scams. It said [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12,11,10],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-corona-virus","tag-online-scams","tag-scams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spampoison.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}