Beware of scammers taking advantage of Covid-19 panic

This week we’ve seen images of a text being shared on social media. The text claims to be from the government, offering recipients a £258 “goodwill payment.” This text is a phishing scam and is not from the government.

The link in the text message directs recipients to a website built to mimic the government website, and prompts users to input their bank details. You should not interact with these texts. There are some signs to look out for if you should receive messages similar to this.

Look for mis-spellings. In this instance, the phrase ‘Covid-19 relief’ was wrongly written as “Covid-19 relieve.” The website linked also ended with a .com url. The government’s website ends with a gov.uk url.

The government has also not made an announcement regarding any one-off payments to the whole UK population following the Covid-19 outbreak.