Have diabetes and want to order an at-home coronavirus testing kit? Want to know more about the federal relief programs like student loan interest suspensions? Need your government relief check now? Robocall scammers are already preying on Americans with scams that leverage the fear and economic fallout from the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.
“Scammers are using illegal robocalls to pitch everything from scam coronavirus treatments to work-at-home schemes,” the Federal Trade Commission says.
According to YouMail, which tracks robocall activity and offers an app to reduce such calls, the COVID-19 pandemic “has more people working from home than ever before and has put a much stronger reliance on bring your own device (BYOD) as well. So, with more people relying on their phone for work-related activities, it’s no surprise that more cybercriminals are taking advantage of potential new vulnerabilities.”
Specifically, it says in a blog post, new “vishing” (voice phishing) and “smishing” (SMS phishing) schemes are on the rise.
“COVID-19 is opening up is all of the new phone scams to trick consumers and BYOD employees out of money or personal confidential information like credit card numbers, social security numbers and even usernames and passwords,” YouMail added.
The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission have made major efforts to reduce the enormous volume of unwanted and fraudulent robocalls, with the FCC set to vote this month on requiring calls to be authenticated through the STIR/SHAKEN framework. The number of unwanted robocalls was up 49% between 2018 and 2019, according to recent analysis by Transaction Network Services, which found that the average consumer received 325 unwanted robocalls in 2019, and Americans as a whole now receive more than 300 million of those calls each day.
YouMail identified four coronavirus robocall scams to watch out for:
-Testing scams, which offer bogus testing kits and prey on people with pre-existing conditions, such as diabetes, that put them at
