Jamaica's government cautioned donors on Thursday about criminal schemes targeting relief funds after Hurricane Melissa battered the island nation.
Minister Andrew Wheatley reported that cybersecurity officials discovered 28 deceptive donation platforms by late afternoon, a sharp increase from eight identified the previous night. Fraudsters constructed these impostor sites to resemble legitimate government pages, using addresses such as jamaicahurricanehelp.net and melissareliefjamaica.com to mislead contributors. Wheatley explained that all authentic Jamaican government domains conclude with .gov.jm, making supportjamaica.gov.jm the sole authorized collection point for hurricane donations.
Officials urged potential contributors to manually type website addresses rather than follow emailed links, confirm the presence of security indicators like https and padlock symbols, and verify the .gov.jm extension before entering payment information. The Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team continues scanning for additional fraudulent operations while coordinating with international security agencies and domain registration companies to disable these criminal enterprises before they can divert money meant for hurricane victims.
Minister Andrew Wheatley reported that cybersecurity officials discovered 28 deceptive donation platforms by late afternoon, a sharp increase from eight identified the previous night. Fraudsters constructed these impostor sites to resemble legitimate government pages, using addresses such as jamaicahurricanehelp.net and melissareliefjamaica.com to mislead contributors. Wheatley explained that all authentic Jamaican government domains conclude with .gov.jm, making supportjamaica.gov.jm the sole authorized collection point for hurricane donations.
Officials urged potential contributors to manually type website addresses rather than follow emailed links, confirm the presence of security indicators like https and padlock symbols, and verify the .gov.jm extension before entering payment information. The Jamaica Cyber Incident Response Team continues scanning for additional fraudulent operations while coordinating with international security agencies and domain registration companies to disable these criminal enterprises before they can divert money meant for hurricane victims.
