Everyone is looking for the latest updates on the pandemic.Ĭonsumers want to know how COVID-19 will impact their shopping trips, including hard-to-find necessities, store hours, restaurant availability for drive-thru or takeout orders, and the like. Why are scammers taking advantage of the coronavirus outbreak? The answer is, unfortunately, it’s easy.

In other cases, the fraudsters create a unique domain that includes the legitimate organisation’s name in the URL.Identity thieves are preying on the fears of individuals around the world as coverage regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic, or COVID-19, increases.įraudsters are exploiting the opportunity to steal the personally identifiable information (PII), financial information, and even medical information, of those looking for knowledge, protection, and treatment for the viral infection. The fake domain often involves character substitution, like using ‘r’ and ‘n’ next to each other to create ‘ rn ’ instead of ‘m’.

The crook will register a fake domain that mimics a genuine organisation and sends thousands of generic requests. In this blog, we look at five of the most common types of phishing email to help you spot the signs of a scam. They might still have the same objective – to steal our personal data or infect our devices – but there are now countless ways to do that. The growing sophisticated of phishing scams has contributed to that. One of the most frustrating things about this is that most people know what phishing is and how it works, but many still get caught out. According to Proofpoint’s 2021 State of the Phish Report, more than 80% of organisations fell victim to a phishing attack last year. Phishing is among the biggest cyber threats facing organisations.

Latest phishing emails