14 DAY TRIAL // The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is accepting donations from individuals who want to help Syrian refugees. While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to help those in need, you must beware of the many donation scam sites set up by fraudsters.
McAfee Senior Threat Researcher Francois Paget has come across a legitimate-looking email that asked him to donate money to the UNHCR to help Syrian refugees.
A link from the email pointed to a donations page apparently hosted on the official UNHCR website. However, the donation page advertised in the spam campaign has nothing to do with UNHCR.
Instead, it’s part of a scam designed to trick users into handing over their money to con artists.
As Paget highlights, the bogus donation site almost perfectly replicates the legitimate UNHCR website (see screenshot). However, the fake page is not hosted on a secure domain.
Before making online payments of any type, remember that secure sites are always protected by a valid digital certificate. The existence of the certificate is shown by the “https” string in front of the address and the green padlock icon in the web browser's address bar.