The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) does not contact the public via e-mail, the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) said on Monday, urging people who receive such e-mails not to reply to or forward them, or click on any links they contain.
Several people have reported receiving e-mails from an address (notices@cdc.gov.tw) purporting to belong to the CDC.
The e-mails claim to provide a “final notice” for COVID-19 testing and say the recipient had come into contact with a person confirmed to have been infected, the CECC said.
Photo: CNA
The e-mails are an attempt at phishing, and since its establishment, the CECC has only contacted the public through notices on its official Web site and social media accounts, it said.
The CECC’s warning came after developers of online security software over the weekend said that people who use the Line messaging app should watch out for suspicious promotions claiming to offer free stickers, as adding an account, posting comments or sharing messages in exchange for stickers could put them at risk of loss of personal information or identity theft.
Taiwan on Friday had reported no new cases of COVID-19 for the sixth consecutive day, and several businesses announced discounts and promotions to celebrate.
Line users should remain vigilant against suspicious online activities and should check if a brand’s fan page has a blue check icon, which authenticates an official media company or brand, the developers said.
Users can also assess a Line account’s credibility by its number of followers and posts, or send a message to Trend Micro’s Dr.Message chatbot or MyGoPen chatbot for fact-checking, they added.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake yesterday struck off the coast of Hualien, causing brief transportation disruptions in northern and eastern Taiwan, as authorities said that aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher could occur over the next three days. The quake, which hit at 7:24pm at a depth of 24.5km, registered an intensity of 4 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. In Taipei, the MRT railway’s operations control center received an earthquake alert and initiated standard safety procedures, briefly halting trains on the Bannan (blue) line for about a minute.
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