Huge jump in fake vaccine domains to steal money, data

New Delhi, March 4 : There has been a surge in vaccine-related scams in recent months and a new report said on Thursday that the number of web domains featuring the word “vaccine” in their title has now significantly increased, and the danger includes credential theft, credit card fraud, malware installation and more.
The team at cyber security firm Check Point Research (CPR) said that since the beginning of November 2020, it has documented 7,056 such new domains, of which 294 were deemed potentially dangerous.
From July till October, the team documented only 1,773 new domains, of which 228 were deemed potentially dangerous.
“In effect, domain registrations increased by 300 per cent throughout the two time periods, while websites deemed dangerous by CPR increased by 29 per cent,” the company said in a statement.
“The reason is that scammers are taking public interest around the vaccine as an opportunity for their own malicious purposes,” it added.
Online scams often start with a domain registration. Upticks in domain registrations signal that scammers are preparing content as a means to profit from criminal campaigns.