Tag: coronavirus

Coronavirus Scams Fake Charities

Fake charities try to take advantage of your generosity and compassion for people in need. These criminals steal your money by posing as genuine charities – they keep your money and that also damages real charities who lose out on your donation.

Scammers are reusing old fake charity messages, just changing the words to suit fears over Coronavirus.

Scammers can pretend to be collection agents for charities or as fundraisers – sometimes of reputable charities and other times of ones they invent.

For Coronavirus, the most common approaches are pretending to be a charity researching medicine to treat the virus or as a research charity seeking to create a vaccine or more recently as a supplier of protective equipment for the health service.

People who receive the coronavirus-themed emails, texts and calls are usually asked to send Bitcoins to the senders, or sometimes to pay by money transfer service such as Money Transfer or to buy iTunes gift cards and tell them the card numbers.

If you receive such messages, do not give any money without checking the charity and the person are genuine. It’s better to approach a charity yourself than rely on emails, texts etc. from people you don’t know.

Legitimate charities are registered – you can check a registration at  http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/ShowCharity/RegisterOfCharities/AdvancedSearch.aspx

Never send money or give personal information, credit card details or online account details to anyone you don’t know or trust.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

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Coronavirus Protective Equipment Scam

We all see on the news that there is a worldwide shortage of personal protective equipment that will offer some level of protection against Coronavirus.

Governments, healthcare services and the public across the world are short of this kit or have limited supplies. Many companies are making more as fast as possible to supply the healthcare services in particular but some sell to the public.

Many scammers offer ridiculous supposed protection (such as lemon juice sprays), but there are also a lot of unscrupulous people offering protective equipment that either doesn’t exist or is such poor quality as to be worse than useless as they could give a false sense of protection.

Many offering genuine protective equipment are charging far too much – such is the greed of the human race.

Scammers typically offer:-

  • Protective masks
  • Face guards
  • Medical gloves
  • Medical aprons and gowns
  • Hand sanitiser
  • Anti-viral cleaning products

It can be difficult to identify the scammers as many legitimate suppliers of these goods are also advertising currently and some companies are now making and selling this kit who have never done so before.

Try wherever possible to buy from reputable sources and beware that hitherto unknown suppliers may well be fake and simply take your money or send out products that are so ineffective as to be dangerous.

Stay safe and follow your government’s guidelines.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

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