A warning from AARP after receiving reports of a new Covid-19 vaccine email scam. I saw one first hand hit an inbox and while it looked legit, was a complete fraud and effort to steal.
The one I saw tricked a very smart family member of mine. It claimed to be “Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine Survey” but was sent from an email address if you closely, was not the same as Pfizer’s legit address. The enticing Pfizer survey scam asked for your opinion of the vaccine after asking which vaccine you either had or are likely to take.
Where the scent of the scamminess started to smell off was when it asked you to enter your name address and a bunch of personal details during the online fake survey. Then the we got to the money trick. If you enter your credit card details, then they will send you a gift for having taken the survey. The amount charged will only be for shipping and handling of the gift. It’s complete and utter BS..And here’s how we know.
Here’s How To Spot the Vaccine Survey Scam
- email address does not match the company’s web address
- copy and paste the email address into a Google search to see how legit it is
- search the real pfizer website for any similar survey and there is not any
looking closer at the email scam, you can see that the Pfizer logo style is off - corporate address is incorrect
The only way a smart person would notice this fraudulent scheme is by putting on a detective hat and doing the work. There will be more vaccine survey scams like this populating your email, text and social media feeds. Rule of thumb aside from the obvious about never giving out personally identifiable information is to ask yourself this one question before ever clicking.
Ask yourself, did I request this? If the answer is no, then don’t interact with it. If you are still curious and want to know if it’s real or fake, go to the company’s actual site by typing it in, not from clicking the email.
Most effective tip to catching an email scam before it get you
Copy the subject line of the email and search it with the word ‘scam’ in google. You’ll get your answer.
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