(WXYZ) — I have a scam alert for you about a problem rearing its ugly head again as we head into the new year, when health and fitness goals are often reset.
It has to do with a scam that can cause harm to your finances and your health.
I received a suspicious email early on Christmas morning with the subject line reading, "Ozempic delivered to your house." But I know with the popularity of this drug and other drugs like it that this one could be some serious clickbait.
When I touched on the sender's name to show the email address, it was this odd email "margauxatdecorative-shoppers."
Clearly this has nothing to do with prescription drugs. The body of the email showed two squares for an Ozempic image that were not there. They had a little question mark in the box and above the two boxes it read, "no images. Click here." Whatever you do, do not click that link.
As pharmacies each week fill more than 1 million prescriptions for Ozempic and other GLP-1 weight loss drugs, scammers are cashing in on the demand.
McAfee's threat research team warned us about this earlier this year. In the first four months of 2024, McAfee reported malicious phishing attempts that were centered around Ozempic, Wegovy and Semaglutide increased 183% compared to October through December of 2023.
Most researchers also found 449 risky website URLs and well over 176,000 dangerous phishing attempts concerning these drugs.
How do you avoid these scams? Only buy from reputable pharmacies, watch our for unreasonably low prices, keep an eye out for website errors and missing product details, and look for misleading claims like a drug that offers a miracle cure or rapid weight loss.
McAfee and other online protection companies do offer web protection to detect and block links.
The key is to not click on those links in the first place so you don't have the malware uploaded to your device, or follow any prompts to give your personal information or your money to these scammers.
