Maryland COVID-19 Contact Tracing

Make sure you know who you’re talking to

May 22, 2020

Next Week, Maryland will begin a state-wide effort to trace the spread of COVID-19. The effort will involve health workers making phone calls to Maryland residents. This is a very important step in identifying potential disease clusters and everyone’s help is needed.

At the same time, Maryland in general and UMBC in particular have been targets of a wide variety of scams taking advantage of people’s fears and uncertainties around this disease. It is very possible that unscrupulous people will take advantage of Maryland’s effort as a cover for phone scams. North Carolina, for instance, started a contact tracing effort last month and has gotten reports of scammers pretending to be health officials and gathering information from residents.

Phone Calls

When you get a call, your caller ID should read “MD COVID”. You will be asked about your health and about your location and interactions within a period of time. You will be asked for your birth date, contact information, and information about any COVID-19 test if you have had one. You will get guidance about potential symptoms to watch for and about self-isolation.

You will NOT be asked for:

· a Social Security number

· financial or bank account information

· personal details unrelated to COVID-19

· photographs or videos

· passwords

· payment

If anyone asks you for this or other information having nothing to do with COVID-19, please do not give it to them.

Text Messaging

So far, Maryland has not announced that text messaging will be part of the contact tracing effort. If you receive a text message that asks you to click on a link for contact tracing, do not click it. At best, it will take you to a scam questionnaire requesting your personal information. Worse, it could download malware to your phone and start harvesting personal information itself.

New Jersey has received reports of text messages pretending to be from contact tracers and telling people that they have already had contact with a potential COVID-19 carrier. These messages also contain links which will lead to information theft and/or malware. Contact tracers don’t work like this.

We encourage the UMBC community to support this important effort to identify and understand the spread of COVID-19. We also ask you to remain alert to those who try create and exploit fears and confusion for their personal gain.