Problem

The damage for individuals, banks, or insurance companies has been rising for years. The FBI’s Internet Crime Report reveals that business lost more than $1.8 billion in 2019 only through email compromise. Fraud detection company Bolster reported that today 30% of total phishing scams are corona-virus-related. Every day we get robocalls from government officials, impersonators, letting us know that our social security number is getting canceled if we don’t provide our credit card information. Even on our CUNY official email, we get our weekly share of phishing attacks. The latest ones are offering jobs from home or COVID-19-related grant money and benefits. They send their hook in millions of emails or automated calls and wait for somebody to click the link to get the malware or to believe their story and contact them back to update their bank information. Or they will redirect them to one of the thousands of fake government sites that supposedly will help them get, let’s say, stimulus checks, but instead, they will gain control of our financial accounts.