The 2020 Election is still over a year away, and political advertisements and news cycles aren’t the only things getting a jump on the season.
Election scams are varied in their intention and approach. Some aim to steal your money, others harvest personal identifying and financial information for identity theft. Others aim to prevent you from voting altogether.
Just earlier this year a California man was caught building 15 fake websites claiming to be for politicians and cashing in on over $250,000 from donors. This kind of scam is common, both online, in emails, and over the phone. Beware of any unsolicited contact by someone claiming to be from a campaign, even if you know of the politician, and even if the caller ID seems to be legit. If you want to contribute to a campaign, go directly to their official website. Always double-check to make sure it actually is their official website – never take action or donate money based on information from just one source.
Landlines are already ringing with fake solicitations for campaign contributions and fake political surveys that promise cash rewards that targets are asked to reveal personal identifying information and fork over money to collect. There have been reports of malicious emails that contain links to websites that download malware onto the target’s computer. In these emails, target receives an email claiming that they must register or re-register to vote by following the link in the email. Of course, the link downloads malware onto the target’s computer. Even if you do need to register to vote, do not click on links in unsolicited emails.
Another election scam is geared towards getting voters to skip the polls, and sometimes give over money and personal identifying information in the process. Vote-by-phone and vote-by-email scams have already been occurring. Again, these calls and emails are unsolicited, and you can NEVER vote by phone or email legitimately. If you are offered the option to vote by either of these two means, it means a crook is trying to scam you out of your right to vote.
We’ve still got another year and change until the election, and these scams are likely to grow in prevalence as the months pass.
