ALERT: Fraudulent Pages Offering Products Against Covid

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The State Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks of Sinaloa (Coepriss) alerts the public to fraudulent pages that offer antibacterial gel for sale, mouth masks, various supplies at “low prices”, false treatments and non-existent promotions taking advantage of the health emergency by the Covid-19.

It has been detected that these “sales” hide the purpose of defrauding or implanting codes with malicious intent in electronic devices, to steal personal information from their victims, even supplanting the identity of companies and government agencies as recently happened to Cofepris .

Commissioner Jorge Alan Urbina Vidales recommends that web users be vigilant and if they receive an email or message with a link or attachment using the coronavirus theme, do not download or open that file or the link for any reason because It may be a deception that represents a serious risk to your assets or your personal data. “They should not make electronic operations in this type of apocryphal accounts,” he said.

“The Cofepris suffered a recent impersonation for a false page that offered mouth masks for sale, so this institution alerted the public so that they did not fall into fraud and withdrew from that web page that offered products on their behalf,” he said.

The portal http://www.cofepris.org offered material with the guarantee of a supposed health record and purchase invoice, requesting personal information to make the purchase, however, the site does not correspond to the official Cofepris portal, which is http : //www.gob.mx/cofepris. “Cofepris initiated an investigation and filed the corresponding complaints against those who are responsible. Even, after being evidenced, the portal was closed and there is no longer access to it; however, the investigations are ongoing, “he said.

The Wix company reported that it removed this fraudulent page from its platform, proceeding to review the case with its legal team and asked to be reported any abusive content. “There are many ways to verify the authenticity of a page. With whois you can check the public contact data of any domain already registered or an IP address on the internet, “said the commissioner.

He specified that Google also offers the function on the state of the site for safe browsing and you only have to open the page in Chrome to search on the left of the page for the security status that can be classified as safe, unsafe or dangerous and even a summary of the degree of privacy of the connection can be obtained. “You should get information with other users about the reliability of a page, which to be secure must show a padlock in the address bar. However, it is better to take precautions and avoid taking unnecessary risks with unknown accounts, “he warned.

Jorge Alan Urbina Vidales recommended not to provide personal data and not to carry out operations without taking due precautions because if a person makes a payment on a fake website, they lose their money and they will never be able to contact the administrators because they are cybercriminals.

He acknowledged that in the face of the shortage, many people seek to purchase products such as antibacterial gel and mouth mask online, but there are criminals who dedicate themselves to committing fraud by taking advantage of the population’s need. “They ask for the deposit and then they disappear. There are also cases in which we are talking about products without sanitary surveillance, that are not reliable and that are probably not hygienic or could be contaminated, ”he said.

He indicated that these links also arrive via WhatsApp in the form of alleged promotions that give away free consumption coupons on the occasion of COVID-19, as happened a few days ago when they supplanted the identity of a well-known supermarket store of this entity. “When users enter the link, a cybercriminal group steals their personal data and asks their contacts for money. There are many cybernetic mechanisms to commit fraud offering endless things to steal user data and commit illicit ”, he stressed.

Finally, the head of Coepriss urged citizens to take extreme precautions to avoid becoming a victim of these online frauds that also use social networks such as Facebook and YouTube, SMS or emails.

Source: pmxportal.com

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