Did you MEME to share your personal info?

What’s your Covid-19 Plan? Our plan is to curl up in the fetal position in a supermarket with a tin-foil hat. But seriously…

Everyone, please protect yourself during this crisis. Take care of your health, work from home if you can, minimize unnecessary trips, practice social distancing. Listen to the advice of experts. Also, protect your personal information.

The news is full of reports of the current COVID-19 emergency being actively exploited by criminals. Phishing, ransomware, and more driven by misinformation on the emergency as well as other tricks of the trade.

Recently we saw a meme generator called “What’s your COVID-19 PLAN?” (see below). On the surface it seems innocent enough. It asks you to generate a meme from your name and birthday. The problem is that anyone seeing your meme will know your month and day of birth. A few more memes and perhaps they could get your year of birth, place of birth, and mothers maiden name. While this isn’t the first time that we’ve seen these PII leaking memes – we did think this was a good time to remind people to be mindful of what you are sharing and what might be at risk.

As an example, if you happened to have been born yesterday, your COVID-19 plan would have ended " ... in outerspace with baby wipes".

We understand that people are stressed, bored, and lacking social contacts. The appeal of simple amusements is understandable. But please, be vigilant. Protect yourselves and your personally identifiable information (PII).

This kind of leak is subtle compared to many of the aggressive scams making the rounds (see below). Please be watchful, stay calm, and don't be rushed. Don't panic. Use your head and be careful out there.

Learn More

• Three things you should never post on social media https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-three-things-you-should-never-post-on-social-media-2019-12-20
• 80% of cyber threat landscape uses COVID-19 as leverage https://securitybrief.co.nz/story/80-of-cyber-threat-landscape-uses-covid-19-as-leverage-report
• New Survey Finds 22% Of Americans Have Been Targeted By Digital Fraud Related To COVID-19 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jessedamiani/2020/03/25/new-survey-finds-22-of-americans-have-been-targeted-by-digital-fraud-related-to-covid-19/
• A nastier scam in the UK the 1st text message is real the second a fake https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/beatthescammers/article-8155145/Coronavirus-fraud-Beware-fake-text-messages-Government-HMRC.html