Coronavirus Phishing Warning

[dkbit98]

Beware of recent phishing scam related to new Coronavirus.
Scammers try to use mass panic and fear to get your data, information, money and crypto.

In this case they are using WHO World Health Organization logo and bad english language and grammar.
They ask you to click on link (do NOT do this) that will direct you to fake WHO website with fake 'safety measures'
All they want now is your email and to click 'verify', then it redirects you to real WHO page.

This is first reported by Sophos Security Team.

 

What to do?

- Never let yourself feel pressured into clicking a link in an email. Most importantly, don’t act on advice you didn’t ask for and weren’t expecting. If you are genuinely seeking advice about the coronavirus, do your own research and make your own choice about where to look.
- Don’t be taken in by the sender’s name. This scam says it’s from “World Health Organization”, but the sender can put any name they like in the From: field.
- Look out for spelling and grammatical errors. Not all crooks make mistakes, but many do. Take the extra time to review messages for telltale signs that they’re fraudulent – it’s bad enough to get scammed at all without realising afterwards that you could have spotted the fraud up front.
- Check the URL before you type it in or click a link. If the website you’re being sent to doesn’t look right, stay clear. Do your own research and make your own choice about where to look.
- Never enter data that a website shouldn’t be asking for. There is no reason for a health awareness web page to ask for your email address, let alone your password. If in doubt, don’t give it out.
- If you realise you just revealed your password to imposters, change it as soon as you can. The crooks who run phishing sites typically try out stolen passwords immediately (this process can often be done automatically), so the sooner you react, the more likely you will beat them to it.
- Never use the same password on more than one site. Once crooks have a password, they will usually try it on every website where you might have an account, to see if they can get lucky.
- Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) if you can. Those six-digit codes that you receive on your phone or generate via an app are a minor inconvenience to you, but are usually a huge barrier for the crooks, because just knowing your password alone is not enough.
....

source:
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/05/coronavirus-safety-measures-email-is-a-phishing-scam/

Educate yourself:
[LEARN] Phishing Quizzes - Beginners & Experts

[Coyster]

All the symptoms, possible cure, safety/prevention methods for the corona virus are all online, it wouldn't even take a second to just research about it, email and password verification is ironically even a longer process to get information on the virus. it's really idiotic and ridiculous to give such information out on a subject that has gathered so much popularity and with all safety measures being made public on various platforms: news, internet, schools, billboards etc

[Wexnident]

The first step tbh, is to stop panicking. If you were to fully understand what the Virus is, and how it spreads, you can understand that the WHO asking for information is completely unneeded, especially if you haven't gone and shown any kind of symptoms. You can also notice it subtly on the sentence and grammar construction of the emails sent, like literally every type of scam email has a form of mistake that is commonly ignored but should be easily seen if observed carefully.

Sides, emails are completely open to the world with how much we use it, but if EVER the WHO would want any kind or sort of information, they would probably inform the world through PUBLIC channels. AKA, the media.

[Baby Dragon]

All the symptoms, possible cure, safety/prevention methods for the corona virus are all online, it wouldn't even take a second to just research about it, email and password verification is ironically even a longer process to get information on the virus. it's really idiotic and ridiculous to give such information out on a subject that has gathered so much popularity and with all safety measures being made public on various platforms: news, internet, schools, billboards etc

The problem is people easily believe and trust an information without even reassuring themselves that its from a trustworthy site. Its really sad to see how people come up with an idea on deceiving people just to exploit their funds and assets, with the current issue that a lot of people are facing right now. I just hope that people will do their research before giving personal information that can be used against them. Fraudsters just prove that they are willing to do anything to get the benefits they wanted so be cautious.

[Juggy777]

Beware of recent phishing scam related to new Coronavirus.
Scammers try to use mass panic and fear to get your data, information, money and crypto.

In this case they are using WHO World Health Organization logo and bad english language and grammar.
They ask you to click on link (do NOT do this) that will direct you to fake WHO website with fake 'safety measures'
All they want now is your email and to click 'verify', then it redirects you to real WHO page.

This is first reported by Sophos Security Team.

 

What to do?

- Never let yourself feel pressured into clicking a link in an email. Most importantly, don’t act on advice you didn’t ask for and weren’t expecting. If you are genuinely seeking advice about the coronavirus, do your own research and make your own choice about where to look.
- Don’t be taken in by the sender’s name. This scam says it’s from “World Health Organization”, but the sender can put any name they like in the From: field.
- Look out for spelling and grammatical errors. Not all crooks make mistakes, but many do. Take the extra time to review messages for telltale signs that they’re fraudulent – it’s bad enough to get scammed at all without realising afterwards that you could have spotted the fraud up front.
- Check the URL before you type it in or click a link. If the website you’re being sent to doesn’t look right, stay clear. Do your own research and make your own choice about where to look.
- Never enter data that a website shouldn’t be asking for. There is no reason for a health awareness web page to ask for your email address, let alone your password. If in doubt, don’t give it out.
- If you realise you just revealed your password to imposters, change it as soon as you can. The crooks who run phishing sites typically try out stolen passwords immediately (this process can often be done automatically), so the sooner you react, the more likely you will beat them to it.
- Never use the same password on more than one site. Once crooks have a password, they will usually try it on every website where you might have an account, to see if they can get lucky.
- Turn on two-factor authentication (2FA) if you can. Those six-digit codes that you receive on your phone or generate via an app are a minor inconvenience to you, but are usually a huge barrier for the crooks, because just knowing your password alone is not enough.
....

source:
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/02/05/coronavirus-safety-measures-email-is-a-phishing-scam/

Educate yourself:
[LEARN] Phishing Quizzes - Beginners & Experts

I’m reading about a scam based on the Coronavirus for the first time, and truth be told even I would have fallen for it due to the panic it has created in my mind hence I wouldn’t be surprised if people too are falling for it. However having said that I would never have clicked that url, because I have formed a new habit i.e. to go to the official site and download any information that I may need. Further I condemn this kind of scam as the world needs to be united in tackling this virus, rather than finding ways to profit from people’s panic caused by this virus.

[Theb]

I don't know why people will be falling for this one but I think people need to put in some sense when it comes to obvious phishing attempts. Just think about it this way, why the hell would WHO post their guidelines on a log-in/email verified protected page? It wouldn't make a lot of sense since literally people are dying and WHO instead of posting this publicly for people to see and have access too will opt out on  allowing only people who have verified their emails. For people who have seen how phishing sites works or at least got victimized by one this should be easily detected but I still wonder why a lot of people are falling for this easy scam.

[sujonali1819]

This is really funny that scammers are choosing this method  to steal people's information and money. I did not see this in the past. It shows that even though scam people are human, they behave inhumanely to their stomachs. Even where thousands of people are dying of the coronary virus, they are not left to do their evil.

They choose this way to steal because coronavirus is now on-trend. So the more the trend, the more careful we should be.

[mk4]

I don't know why people will be falling for this one but I think people need to put in some sense when it comes to obvious phishing attempts. Just think about it this way, why the hell would WHO post their guidelines on a log-in/email verified protected page?

I think it's probably safe to assume that the target audience of this scam is probably mostly the older folks with a lot less knowledge than your typical teen or young adult; and to accompany that, a fear-mongering niche, which is once again, a niche that the older folks surely LOVE to share on social media even if most are fake or at least misleading news.

[bL4nkcode]

Heard this news somewhere on tv or just an article, but in receivers scenario, I will be wondered if I received this email, while I don't have an account on the WHO website or if there's really something like that, why I have received an email from them (WHO website). First, questioned how they get my email, with that, there's nothing to think another question, just delete or report the email as spam or phishing then block the sender.

[Theb]

I don't know why people will be falling for this one but I think people need to put in some sense when it comes to obvious phishing attempts. Just think about it this way, why the hell would WHO post their guidelines on a log-in/email verified protected page?

I think it's probably safe to assume that the target audience of this scam is probably mostly the older folks with a lot less knowledge than your typical teen or young adult; and to accompany that, a fear-mongering niche, which is once again, a niche that the older folks surely LOVE to share on social media even if most are fake or at least misleading news.

Even if they are targeting old people that would be a very very small population since old people don't really use emails. Research shows that our senior citizens tend to go online just to use the search engine, go to social media websites like us, and also watch videos in Youtube. So if they are targeting old people it should be not through their emails but on where they usually hang out like in Facebook or Youtube where most scam giveaways are seen. Aside from phishing sites that really buy information including your emails, phishing sites really don't have any kind of demographics needed since all they need is thousands of email addresses and hope for that chance that some of you will be fooled by giving in your true credentials.

[ScamViruS]

Scammers are trying all sorts of tactics. They want to scam by exploiting a situation! They always use trending topic to scam people easily. The virus is killing people, and scammers are using the virus name to get to the phishing website. People who know about online they do not give their personal information to any unknown source. The fear is about those who do not know about it. Every day my public email gets lots of scam emails. I don't know how they collected my email.

[tvplus006]

The problem is people easily believe and trust an information without even reassuring themselves that its from a trustworthy site. Its really sad to see how people come up with an idea on deceiving people just to exploit their funds and assets, with the current issue that a lot of people are facing right now. I just hope that people will do their research before giving personal information that can be used against them. Fraudsters just prove that they are willing to do anything to get the benefits they wanted so be cautious.

Now the main type of fraud that is associated with the coronavirus is that sites are created that aim to collect donations to fight the infection. And many people want to help fight the coronavirus and give their money to fraudsters. And this money does not go to fight the infection, but goes into the pocket of fraudsters.

[mk4]

Even if they are targeting old people that would be a very very small population since old people don't really use emails. Research shows that our senior citizens tend to go online just to use the search engine, go to social media websites like us, and also watch videos in Youtube.

Yea sure emails are definitely getting irrelevant now due to the presence of social media, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they don't have emails just because they don't use it that much anymore. In the sort of middle-age parents demographic, I know more people with emails than social media accounts. Now, if they still remember their Yahoo! mail login credentials is another thing LOL.

[sheenshane]

I wonder if someone is really caught with this kind of stupid phishing site. Clearly, the website and the email's construction of sentences are too poor to catch a fish. Besides, the World Health Organization wouldn't waste time to release emails to everybody regarding the virus. They have branches under them that are responsible for these kinds of caution messages. I can tell that most of the internet users are aware of phishing sites already. But this is still alarming thank you for the heads up OP.

[mk4]

I wonder if someone is really caught with this kind of stupid phishing site. Clearly, the website and the email's construction of sentences are too poor to catch a fish.

Though there's a good chance that these scammers are people from countries whereas not a lot of people are decently fluent with English, you could argue that the people they're actually targeting are those people who have really really poor reading comprehension(and or English knowledge in general) in the first place.

[dkbit98]

Though there's a good chance that these scammers are people from countries whereas not a lot of people are decently fluent with English, you could argue that the people they're actually targeting are those people who have really really poor reading comprehension(and or English knowledge in general) in the first place.

Most scammed people are living in United States and other english speaking countries.  
Scammers make on purpose grammatical errors and mistakes (I saw this on one research) to attract only less intelligent people and ones that are driven by fear.