Police Warn of Coronavirus Text Scam That Contains Fake Alert About Potential Infection

By Jason Murdock for Newsweek
Thursday, April 16, 2020

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recorded over 18,200 complaints about COVID-19 fraud between January 1 and April 14, 2020—with 1,071 of those linked to text-based schemes. The total loss to such fraud in that period was estimated at $13.44 million, the agency said.

"Criminals are now aggressively exploiting our overall unreadiness for the COVID-19 crisis, profiteering from the unprecedented technical susceptibility of the victims. Working from home, operations disrupted by digital transformation and a shortage of security personnel have introduced a wide spectrum of cybersecurity challenges," explained Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of security firm ImmuniWeb. Read Full Article