Protect yourself from getting scammed online or by phone with the following聽tips and advice.聽
Scammers are taking advantage of the Covid-19 situation with scams designed to get you to give聽your financial or personal information.聽This could be聽be phone call, text, email, or even someone knocking on your door.聽
Look out for聽scams:
- Encouraging聽you to buy face masks or聽antibacterial hand gel
- Claiming聽that they can provide you with a list of people in your region affected by Covid-19
- Claiming to be from the Government, your GPs surgery, the NHS, or even the World Health Organisation (WHO)聽
These messages can look credible but may聽contain malicious links, attachments or lead to malicious websites - they may even ask for payment in Bitcoin. Malware can affect聽BU and personal devices which enables scammers聽to collect your online credentials and personal information.
Please remain vigilant when studying or working from home and follow these聽steps to聽help you stay safe online.
If you receive a call or text asking you to act urgently, particularly if it聽claims聽to be from your bank, follow the #TakeFive advice and watch the video below to reduce the risk of聽falling victim to聽fraud and scam. Follow , or and聽visit the for up to date information.
Remember to:
- Stop: Think before parting with your money or information聽
- Challenge: Could it be fake?聽
- Protect: If you think you鈥檝e fallen for a scam contact your bank immediately
If you are at all uncertain about the links in an email:
- navigate to BU鈥檚 dedicated coronavirus pages via the main BU website, rather than clicking the link embedded in the email or you could just type the link directly into your web browser. BU's dedicated Covid-19 pages can be found here: www.bournemouth.ac.uk/coronavirus
- report any suspicious emails to IT Services. This could be messages with a web link that does not point directly to the BU website or an email that requests that you open an attachment to read the message.
For further information or to report a suspicious email message please contact IT Services on 01202 9(65515), option 1.
