Much has been said about staying safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our hands have never been cleaner (and drier). Wearing a mask in public is no longer just reserved for Comic-Con season. Working in your pajamas is super A-OK as state and federal governments continue to ask people to practice social distancing and work from home whenever possible.
But as we begin to distance ourselves from the starting line and inch closer back to our former realities, many state and city governments are looking for ways to keep the curve as flattened as possible during the initial stages of reopening the economy. This will likely prompt us to adopt new ways of staying safe — albeit for entirely different reasons.
Don’t worry, this isn’t a lesson on DIY masks or how to easily measure 6 feet. You can get that just about anywhere else. We’re talking about contact tracing and the unfortunate, but inevitable scamming dangers that come with it.
Public health departments across the country have started hiring contact tracers to keep infections from rebounding as social floodgates start to crack open. That is, workers responsible for contacting people who have potentially been exposed to other people who have tested positive for the virus. (To be clear, this is entirely separate from the contact tracing technology Apple and Google are expected to roll out in the coming weeks.)
Experts estimate that the United States will need anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 people working as contact tracers in order to effectively pull this off.
That process, according to the Federal Trade Commission, will look something like this:
Person A tests positive for COVID-19.
Person A communicates with contact tracing workers to develop a list of people who may have been infected by Person A. Lists will include names and phone numbers when possible.
Contact tracing workers send a text message to each person on that list, stating that they may have been exposed. The notification also states that these people should expect to receive a call from the specific phone number included in the message.
The contact tracing worker calls the people on the list, simply notifying them that they may have come in contact with somebody infected with the virus. The workers will also recommend a self-quarantine of 14 days. Some states may also ask these people if they’d like to enroll in a text messaging program that sends daily health and safety reminders through the duration of the 14-day period. They already have your phone number, so nothing weird here.
Perhaps a little intrusive, but generally understandable given the circumstances of all that’s going on, right?
Sure, but based on that quick explainer, you can see pretty clearly how scammers may be looking at this as an opportunity to strike. Not only because we’ll grow to expect these messages to some degree, but also because of the importance surrounding these types of notifications. COVID-19 is big-ticket stuff to many, and being notified of a potential exposure is something that they probably won’t take lightly. They’ll learn to expect and be receptive to these notifications if and when they come.
The FTC offers some warning signs of what to expect from a legitimate contact tracing call, noting that “tracers won’t ask you for money or information like your Social Security, bank account, or credit card number. Anyone who does is a scammer.”
The FTC also warns that initial text messages from contact tracers will only be used to notify you that you will be receiving a call in the future, with that same message containing the phone number making the call. Any text messages containing a link should be considered a scam, the organization says.
We can’t say this loudly enough, but please don’t click on those links. They’re like coronavirus, but for your personal data.
Legitimate health departments will only be contacting you to inform you of potential exposure — they will not contact you to extract any information.
There are a number of semi-effective ways of potentially dealing with this, such as filtering your text messages or keeping your mobile device’s software up to date, but those methods will only go so far. There is no replacement for simply being informed and having the wherewithal to be able to navigate past dangerous scam attempts.
It doesn’t just stop there, though, the Federal Communications Commission warns of other scams looking to take advantage of virus-related concerns. We’ll sum a few of them up for you:
There is no such thing as the FCC Financial Care Center, and they most certainly do not have $30,000 of COVID-19 relief to give you.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services isn’t requiring everybody to take mandatory online COVID-19 test. Not yet, anyway. Please don’t click on those links.
You’ll get your check when you get it. The IRS likely doesn’t have the bandwidth to actively reach out to every single American to ask them to validate personal information.
There is a very, very low likelihood that any government entity will ever call you, completely out of the blue, to offer you a work-from-home opportunity.
In all seriousness, many are facing increasingly difficult times right now. But the search for hope shouldn’t blind you from some of the telltale signs associated with scam attempts. A quick Google search will often result in some pretty clear indications on whether you’re being scammed or not.