People in Ohio have reported receiving an offical looking email that appears to come from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services in which people are lured into clicking on links purportedly for information about applying for Pandmic Unemployment Assistance benefits, however the email is a scam. In scams such as this if you click on the links provided either you will be tricked into providing personal information that will be used to make you a victim of identity theft or, even worse, merely by clicking on the link you will download dangerous malware such as ransomware or keystroke logging malware that can lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft.
TIPS
Unfortunately it is quite easy to create phishing emails such as this with counterfeit logos that appear legitimate which is why whenever you get an email or text message that attempts to convince you to click on a link or provide information you should remember my motto, “Trust me, you can’t trust anyone” and not click on the link or provide any information unless you have absolutely confirmed that the email or text message was legitimate. Many such phishing emails come from cybercriminals outside of the country where English is not the primary language. Consequently, many of those phishing emails will have spelling and grammatical errors, however, other emails such as this will have proper spelling and grammar. Often these emails are sent by a botnet of zombie computers that have been infected and used to send out these emails so that the email address that sends you the email has nothing to do with the purported sender. If you get an email that indicates it is coming from a company or government agency, but the email address from which it was sent has nothing to do with the particular company or agency, there is a good chance that it is a phishing email sent through a botnet. However, sophisticated cybercriminals will use email addresses that can appear quite legitimate so the best course of action if you receive such an email that asks you to click on a link or provide personal information is to refrain from doing so and instead contact the real company or agency, which in this case would be the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services where you can confirm that the email was a scam.
For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.” Scamicide was recently cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.
If you are not a subscriber to Scamicide.com and would like to receive daily emails with the Scam of the day, all you need to do is to go to the bottom of the initial page of http://www.scamicide.com and click on the tab that states “Sign up for this blog.”