Google rolls out website to help users avoid COVID-19 related online scams

Google’s website is available in English and Hindi and there are plans to make it available in other languages also.
Google rolls out website to help users avoid COVID-19 related online scams
Google rolls out website to help users avoid COVID-19 related online scams
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Those battling the surfeit of scams during the COVID-19 pandemic will get a boost with Google stepping in to protect people from falling victim. There have been phishing attempts and luring people to contribute to fake COVID relief accounts and so on. Google has now rolled out a dedicated website which deals with reducing the risks associated with the COVID-19 crisis, as per a report in the Livemint. The website will provide information on the ways you can get exploited by these anti-social elements online.

One of the most frequently noticed methods is to send a message posing as a charitable organisation or an NGO and seeking funds for COVID relief activities.

Google’s website is available in English and Hindi and there are plans to make it available in other languages also.

There is a provision to check if any links being furnished by those seeking funds are genuine or not. If you are on a PC, you could hover your mouse over the link for some time. If you are using the mobile, then you have to long-press the link without opening it. There are websites that carry malicious content and visiting those pages can surely lead you to a dangerous cybersecurity situation.

The numbers are staggering. Google says it has detected 18 million daily malware and phishing attempts related to COVID-19. In terms of spam messages, there have been 240 million of them.

Google’s attempts at detecting and blocking or at least warning the user of malware and suspicious contents are not anything of recent origin. When you use Gmail, its internal machine learning models automatically identify and block possible threats from even getting delivered to your mailbox. This takes care of up to 99.9% of such malware, Google claims. The Chrome browser too has inbuilt mechanisms to warn the users of anything amiss with the sites you are trying to visit. Similarly, there’s the Google Play Protect, which takes care of the apps on Google Play.

Apart from Google, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are also battling these crooks who are trying to fish in troubled waters and send fake messages. Facebook says it has taken down 40 million posts related to COVID-19 around the world since it had fake news.

Twitter says it removed 2,230 harmful tweets during the period between March 18 and April 23.

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