How do these scams work?
Criminals attempting to defraud you will often use a topical issue of the day as their way into gaining your trust. Covid-19 vaccinations are just the latest in a long list of these.
In this instance, fraudsters will often send a text or an email claiming to be from the NHS and ask for personal details like your name, address, date of birth, and phone number – or as in Sioban’s case – mother’s maiden name.
This information will then be used to attack you. The same people will ring you up pretending to be from your bank and will ask whether you were texted or emailed about a Covid-19 vaccine.
When you say that you did, still pretending to be the bank, they tell you that your account is under attack and your money should be moved into a safe account they will set up for you. This is when they steal your money.
Fighting the scammers
Sarah Lyons, from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), spoke to You and Yours about these scams.
“Unfortunately criminals are taking advantage of the pandemic to try to make money out of all of us. We see them using a huge variety of methods, such as the email with links, or text messages and phone call – these phishing attacks.”
The good news is that there are ways to protect against these scams. If you suspect that you have received a phishing email, then forwarding the email to report@phishing.gov.uk will send it into the system of the NCSC.
If it is found to be malicious, then it will be blocked or taken down. If you receive a text, forward it to 7726.
Ms Lyons said that since the email reporting service was launched just over a year ago, they had received more than six-and-a-half million email reports from the public.
These have led to more than 50,000 scams being blocked and 97,000 scam URLs being brought down.