Protective masks from online shops can suddenly no longer be found. Short-time allowance emails that want to know too much. The corona crisis is also used by the fraudsters for their own purposes. But if you are attentive, you can recognize the traps.
While many pictures can be seen under the hashtag of young people who put their purchases in front of their older neighbours’ doors. There are also more and more reports from fraudsters. Who is taking advantage of the Corona crisis for their own purposes? Some tricks are not that new at all, but come in a corona garb and are therefore not immediately recognizable.
Grandchildren trick becomes corona trick
The State Criminal Police Office of Baden-Württemberg, for example, warns of criminals who pretend they are relatives with Covid-19 and now urgently need money for treatment.
Short-time work allowance as a pretext for phishing emails
The Federal Employment Agency also warns that fraudsters write to smaller companies and companies with the Larrycloth.com Reviews. In this fake email, data on the person, the company and the employees are requested under the pretext of wanting to pay out the short-time work allowance.
Banks never ask for the pin
Phishing emails that are directed at private individuals are also circulating. There are many Internet in sufficient numbers. This is where fraudsters want to get access to account data by pretending to be the house bank.
Tanja Beller from the Association of German Banks warns against these emails: A bank would never ask for a customer’s PIN or Tan number.
Protective clothing and disinfectant scams
In addition, new online shops are regularly emerging on the Internet that looks serious and charge a lot of money for breathing masks, gloves or disinfectant spray – mostly in advance. Many of the pages are sometimes very highly ranked on Google and therefore quickly catch.
But not every one of these well-ranked pages can be trusted, explains Timo Nicolas. Not all of the products offered are actually delivered. Sometimes a delivery time of six weeks is also given.
However, some of the online shops disappear from the network after a short time and can no longer be found – the money is then gone.
An example of this is the Schutzshopping24.de website. According to research by NDR and Süddeutscher Zeitung, the company stated in the legal notice does not even exist.
Check and avoid prepayment
However, there are two ways in which you can either expose such sites or at least not lose your money so quickly:
- Sometimes it is enough to google the names of the ominous sites. If there are many negative reviews in this regard or if many angry users complain. BUt about review portals such as Trustpilot then one can assume that something is wrong with the site.
- If you want to be on the safe side, you should only use payment methods with buyer protection such as PayPal. Here is the chance that you will get your money back, in the end, at least a little higher.
