Return to Work: Beware of Fraudulent Contact Tracers
As contact tracing ramps up in states across the country, state and local officials are increasingly warning of a rise in fraudulent contract tracers seeking to wrongfully obtain personal and financial information. We have previously written about contact tracing – long considered to be “a central pillar” of traditional infectious disease control – and how it works. In order to begin safely reopening their states, state and local health departments have turned to contact tracing in order to identify everyone a sick person may have potentially exposed, with the goal of identifying newly infected individuals before they become infectious to others, thereby stopping the spread before it starts.
As contact tracing has become more prevalent, however, fraudulent contact tracers have found a uniquely vulnerable population.