Allegany County COVID-19 Statistic Update & Scams

PLEASE BE AWARE that as with any major event or crisis, there are those that try to take advantage of others. County Officials are reporting an increase in attackers masquerading as a reputable entity or person. Most often these types of attacks come through the mail, telephone, or computer. Please be especially leery of anyone asking for money, gift cards, or other type of currency. While some attacks are poorly written and clearly fake, others have gotten quite sophisticated, and it can be difficult to tell that something isn’t legitimate until after it’s too late. While many scams are trying to obtain money, other scams are designed to trick you into divulging personal and financial information such as passwords, account IDs, or credit card details to name just a few. Cyber criminals have become especially crafty and use public sources of information, including social networks from LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter to gather personal information that they use to trick unsuspecting people. Our insurance carrier identified the following top clues that can indicate that a message is from someone trying to scam you:

-The message uses subdomains, misspelled URLs, or suspicious URLs.

-The recipient uses a Gmail or other public email address rather than a corporate email address.

-The message is written to invoke fear or a sense of urgency.

-The message includes a request to verify personal information, such as financial details or a password.

-The message is poorly written and has spelling and grammatical errors.