The following message was sent by email to SUNY New Paltz students and employees on Sept. 23.
Hello all,
I wanted to alert you about the potential for fraudulent calls regarding Coronavirus contact tracing.
For those who don’t know, New York State (and various agencies within the state including SUNY New Paltz, the Ulster Conty Department of Health, the Departments of Health of other counties in New York, and even agencies in other states) are involved in contact tracing for the pandemic. The legitimate contact tracing is a valuable resource which helps determine who may be at risk for having contracted the virus from others who have tested positive (or are suspected of being positive and awaiting tests).
Unfortunately, like with many crises, where some step up and do what’s needed during, others exploit it.
There are reports of calls from scammers who are impersonating contact tracers. We have not yet had these calls reported by the New Paltz community, but wanted to alert you as these scams are increasing. If you receive a call from someone claiming to be a contact tracer, I don’t want you to completely ignore it out of hand, but there are some red flags you should be aware of.
Legitimate contact tracers will never:
- Ask for financial information (including bank account or credit card numbers) or other sensitive information like your social security number
- Ask you to buy gift cards
- Ask for passwords
- Ask for your immigration status
Normally, in non-pandemic related eras (i.e. the good old days) I’d just say ignore any unsolicited calls and be done with it, but it’s more complicated here unfortunately.
For more on this, see the NPR article below, or the Federal Trade Commission’s website about coronavirus related scams.
- https://ftc.gov/coronavirus/scams
- https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/08/20/903664222/how-to-tell-a-real-covid-19-contact-tracers-call-from-a-scammers
Thanks for your caution!
Paul Chauvet
Information Security Officer
