Thousands of people in multiple countries around the world have been receiving fraudulent phone calls offering to register for an alleged coronavirus vaccine in exchange for some money. In the case of countries like India or the United States, victims are asked to pay $10 USD to register on this alleged list of people who will receive the vaccine before others.
U.S. cyber police have already received multiple complaints related to this fraudulent campaign. One of the whistleblowers, who requested to remain anonymous, mentions that he received a phone call in which a stranger asked for his bank account details for “priority access to the vaccine,” whose application was recently approved by the federal government.
The competent authorities issued a statement to prevent users from this campaign, specifying that fraud operators will seek to obtain transfers or even access the victims’ bank accounts.
“Cybercriminal groups have developed a new method for compromising users’ bank accounts; we strongly advise people to ignore any calls in which they are offered a coronavirus vaccine. Scammers could also be sending SMS messages and emails,” the authorities say.
Finally, the authorities recommend that users do not download mobile apps from unauthorized platforms, as they could contain malware for threat actors to access the accounts of affected users.
He is a cyber security and malware researcher. He studied Computer Science and started working as a cyber security analyst in 2006. He is actively working as an cyber security investigator. He also worked for different security companies. His everyday job includes researching about new cyber security incidents. Also he has deep level of knowledge in enterprise security implementation.