During this rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, when we should be coming together as a people, others have decided to use people’s fear for their malicious benefits sending email scams.
There have been clickbait emails circulating. Clickbait is designed to attract your attention and entice you to click on a false link which is very deceptive. Some emails are disguised as coming from WHO, World Health Organization, and the CDC, Center for Disease Control. Others emails are promising vaccines, the cure, and securing donations.
Take these measures to protect yourself from email scams and your emails from being hacked.
- Mouse over any links being sent to you and see if you are being directed to a non-credible website.
- Check the email for any typos or spelling errors.
- Act as if you are going to reply to the email. Notice that the reply-to email address may not be from who you thought was the original sender. This is a good practice for testing if a suspicious email is really spam or legitimately from someone you know.
- Don’t open attachments. The attachment may contain malware.
- Use your auto-updates. This will ensure that your mobile, tablet, and desktop have the up-to-date antivirus software.
- And of course the safest action to take is to simply delete the email.