Election Themed Scams

With the upcoming election right around the corner cybercriminals are creating election themed scams. These scams can be in many variety of forms like social media posts, phishing emails, text messages and vishing scams. Since a big red flag when spotting scams was misspellings and grammatical errors, cybercriminals now use AI to make these scams are more convincing and with no errors. Cybercriminals will try to make these scams look legitimate, like the real ones that candidates are putting out. 

In many of these scams, they will use wording for you to donate to a candidate and include a link that will take you to a fake webpage. Once the person is on this webpage, it prompts them to enter their credit card. If the person puts their credit card information in, it goes straight to the cybercriminals. Another scam could be a phishing email where they send out a survey and also trick you into sharing your personal and credit card information. Vishing scams are also on the rise with this topic. Cybercriminals will call people and say that you need to update your voter registration. When the person gives out their voter information the cybercriminals will then steal it.

TIPS:

• Be cautious about unexpected emails, text messages and phone calls. Never give your information to someone over the phone or type it in from a link from an unexpected message.
• Always hover over links to see where they are really taking you.
• Remember that these types of scam can be happening for any popular event not just the election.

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