Security News > 2021 > December > Omicron Phishing Scam Already Spotted in UK
The global pandemic has provided cover for all sorts of phishing scams over the past couple of years, and the rise in alarm over the spread of the latest COVID-19 variant, Omicron, is no exception.
U.K. consumer watchdog "Which?" has raised the alarm that a new phishing scam, doctored up to look like official communications from the National Health Service, is targeting people with fraud offers for free PCR tests for the COVID-19 Omicron variant.
"NHS scientists have warned that the new Covid [sic] variant Omicron spreads rapidly, can be transmitted between fully vaccinated people, and makes jabs less effective," one phishing email discovered by Which? read. "However, as the new covid [sic] variant has quickly become apparent, we have had to make new test kits as the new variant appears dormant in the original tests."
By May, the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Department of Homeland Security shut down a scam site targeting immigrant communities with vaccine-related phishing scams.
Even people who held onto their jobs were targeted once they returned to work, with scam emails purporting to offer new office COVID-19 protocols.
Anyone who received one of these scam Omicron PCR test emails is advised by Which? to forward it via report websites to the NCSC. There's a sea of unstructured data on the internet relating to the latest security threats.