Anything in the news that the public is interested in is fodder for scammers.  I have warned you many times about scams related to school shootings, natural disasters, the war in Ukraine and many more events that have garnered public interest.  Unfortunately, the death of Pope Francis is such an event and scammers have wasted no time launching a myriad of scams with the intention of gathering your personal information and using it to make you a victim of identity theft, luring you into other scams or downloading dangerous malware that can lead to you becoming a victim of identity theft.

Some of these scams start as social media posts that lure you into clicking on links purportedly to take you to news stories about Pope Francis including some posts that claim his death is a hoax.  Through the use of artificial intelligence, these posts can appear to be very legitimate.  Clicking on the links however can cause you to download dangerous malware.  In other instances, the scammers will take you to a site that asks for personal information to be eligible for a gift card giveaway.

TIPS

The rules remain the same, never click on a link in an email, text message or social media post unless you have absolutely confirmed that the link is legitimate.  The risk of downloading malware is too great.  Even if you have the most up to date security software, it will not protect you from the lastest zero day defects which exploit vulnerabilities that have not yet been discovered.

With so much misinformation out there, it behooves all of us to avoid getting the news through social media posts, but rather use legitimate news sources, such as the New York Times or CNN when looking for accurate reporting of curren events.

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