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Breaking free from the deadly entanglement of COVID-19 phishing schemes

During the ongoing pandemic, any information about the virus on the internet will be devoured by the masses, regardless of its authenticity. Such is the need to know more about COVID-19 that netizens may even visit relatively unknown informational websites to attain invaluable data about vaccinations, spread rates, daily infections, and deaths. Unfortunately, this also presents cunning cyber-attackers with undeniable opportunities to lay malware and phishing traps all over the internet. As a result, the likelihood of visiting a website for information and having your data breached and network damaged can be pretty high right now. So, here are a few ways with which you could avoid falling into such traps:

Avoid opening spam emails

Emails that directly go into the spam folder in your email inbox need to be deleted. Such emails generally contain malicious website links that cause viruses and malware to get downloaded onto your device when you click them. Also, unverified links on WhatsApp groups must be avoided. People generally tend to pass on ‘knowledge’ on instant messaging apps without bothering to verify it. Not clicking such links and avoiding spam emails from unknown sources can prevent you from falling into the trap.

Keep data protection tools updated

It is always helpful to keep your anti-virus software and firewall regularly updated. These tools need the updates in order to fight newer threats that keep emerging on data networks.

(The author is Sonit Jain is CEO – GajShield Infotech and the views expressed in this article are his own)

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