COVID-related Cybercrime in the UK on the Rise

Vaccine rollout used as a trick to harvest people's personal information for fraud through email and text

More scams were taken down by the UK's cybersecurity agency in the last year compared to the previous three years combined. Coronavirus swindles are fueling the increase. 

According to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), experts saw a 15-fold increase in the removal of online campaigns in 2020 compared to the previous year.

People's personal information has been fraudulently harvested using the official Covid-19 vaccine rollout both through email and text messages.The result is an increase of phishing attacks that feature the NHS branding to fool victims.

In addition, 43 fake NHS Covid-19 apps that were hosted outside of official app stores were removed.

Dr Ian Levy, the technical director of the NCSC told reporters that the big increase in Covid-19-related scams, fake vaccine shops, fake PPE shops show that criminals have no bounds on what they will abuse and the fear that they engender to try and harm and defraud people.

However, with over 4,000 promotions, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) remains the most copied brand used by fraudsters, followed by the government's gov.uk website and TV Licensing.

Over 700,000 scam campaigns taken down so far

According to the NCSC's fourth active cyber defense report, over 700,500 campaigns were taken down, including 1,448,214 deceitful URLs.

Another issue raised was endorsement scams, which falsely claim to be backed up by celebrities like Sir Richard Branson and Martin Lewis. Some of them go as far as to use UK newspaper brand identities. According to Ian Levy, these swindles are really convincing and, since they are really well created, it does not come as a surprise that people fall for them.

The report is released just days before the two-day CyberUK event, that include speakers from the NCSC, as well as the home secretary, Priti Patel, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, and the director of the GCHQ, Jeremy Fleming.

“Whether it has been protecting vital research into the vaccine or helping people work from home securely, the NCSC has worked with partners to protect the digital homeland during this unprecedented period,” said Lindy Cameron, the NCSC's chief executive.