Protect Your Tech

Fake ‘Coronavirus Digital Passport’ emails

Scammers are sending emails impersonating the NHS that urge you to apply for a ‘Coronavirus Digital Passport’. The emails claim that this passport is “documentation proving that you have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or you recently recovered from COVID-19”, and will therefore let you “travel safely and freely around the world without having to self-isolate”.

It pretends the passport contains a digital signature that’s embedded in a QR code. This will be scanned by border staff when you enter a country. To get the passport you’re asked to click a blue ‘Get Digital Passport’ link ( 1 in screenshot), which supposedly takes you to the ‘NHS portal’, but actually sends you to a fake site that asks for your payment details.

How can you stay safe?

Make sure you read the official sources for how to get proof of your Covid jabs.

In England, you can get the NHS Covid Pass through the NHS app ( not the NHS COVID-19 app) at www.snipca. com/38729 or the NHS website: www.snipca.com/38730.

Also, read Gov.uk’s advice on what the pass allows you to do: www.snipca. com/38728.

In Scotland, visit www.snipca. com/38731 for details on proving your ‘vaccination status’, while both Northern Ireland ( www.snipca.com/38732) and Wales ( www.snipca. com/38733) are working on printed and digital methods of showing that you’ve had the jab. Also make a note that scammers will continue to exploit every aspect of the pandemic until it’s finally over. As scams go, this isn’t especially sophisticated. Yes, it has the NHS logo, but it looks amateurish and has a clumsy formatting error at the bottom where the sentence abruptly ends after ‘QR code;’.

This is followed by a new paragraph beginning with ‘border staff’, starting with a lower-case b 2 .