The FBI, security software vendors and security professionals have all noted an unfortunate aspect of the coronavirus epidemic in the online world: increased phishing attempts attempting to exploit the situation.
Phishing attacks are fraudulent attempts to gain access to sensitive information such as financial account information, credit card numbers or passwords by using communications that appear to come from authoritative sources.
The Covid-19 pandemic presents a good opportunity to exploit for these types of scam artists because the fear and uncertainty around the situation lead people to defer to experts and authority figures more readily and to pay attention more when they see emails related to ‘Covid 19 Warning’ or ‘Important Covid Information.’
So, the usual rules of email security best practices apply– especially now and especially when dealing with covid-related emails. Above all, don’t click on links in emails. If you are unsure if the source of the email is legitimate, attempt to go their website by entering in a URL or search term in another browser window.