With the surge in Covid-19 cases due to the Omicron variant, the government has decided to administer booster shots or a third vaccine to the citizens in order to develop immunity in their bodies to fight the highly transmissible variant. Currently, the booster shot is being administered to senior citizens and frontline workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The booster shot can be booked online on the CoWIN platform. But people need to be careful while booking the slot because you may lose money. Scammers are finding a new way to make money by helping people get a booster shot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here’s all you need to know about the booster scam!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Scammers posing as government health experts are contacting gullible people to book their booster shots. Fraudsters primarily target senior citizens and other eligible individuals. Surprisingly, the scammers are well-prepared to mislead people. A person claiming from the health department will contact an elderly person and ask for personal information such as vaccine dose specifics for the first and second shots, as well as address, phone number, and other information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then after a few days, the person will receive a call from someone purporting to be from the health department, requesting assistance in scheduling a booster shot. Personal data are confirmed to make the call look authentic, and the scam caller convinces the victim that a message with an OTP would be sent to their registered phone number. After that, he or she will request the OTP to confirm the booster shot appointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other circumstances, the caller may ask the victim to download a specific app to their phone, usually a remote desktop tool like AnyDesk or TeamViewer, to assist them with the booking process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The issue now is that OTP is typically created for the UPI request money feature, or it is also seen that the fraudster already has the victim’s bank account details in their record. They may ask for the bank details and OTP to make payment and book the slot online if they don’t have the bank data. The OTP is simply requested to transfer funds from the victim’s bank accounts via UPI or internet banking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scammers are primarily targeting those in rural areas or the elderly, who may not be familiar with UPI, remote desktop apps, or online banking. To obtain the OTP for bank transfer, a convincing story is presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How to stay safe from such scams<\/strong>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first thing to keep in mind is that government employees will never call you to schedule a vaccine appointment. In fact, there isn’t a way to register via phone. The CoWIN platform is the only way to schedule a Covid vaccine appointment. You can use the Aarogya Setu app or the CoWIN desktop website. You can also register and receive a vaccine by going directly to any vaccine centre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No government official will ever ask for an OTP in order to schedule a vaccine appointment. Moreover, OTPs are designed to be kept private and should not be shared with anybody.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scammers posing as government health experts are contacting gullible people to book their\u00a0booster shots to fight the Omicron variant. Know about the booster shot scam here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":222822,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Omicron Booster Alert: Scammers finding new way to make money by helping people get booster shot | Here's all you need to know\n\n#Omicron #OmicronBoosterShot #BoosterShot #BoosterShotScam","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[111298,1497],"tags":[118811,118398,118810,118809],"yst_prominent_words":[28834,3885,6721,4051,21928,89243,39785,24445,48599],"ppma_author":[140543],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/apnlive\/uploads\/2021\/12\/04104813\/omicron.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":140543,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"apnnewsdesk","display_name":"APN Live","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/478eacb893eda88aa6ed8d99b005bf58?s=96&r=g"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259099"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259099"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=259099"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apnlive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=259099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}