TORONTO — A U.S. security firm says at least two shadowy criminal groups are specifically targeting Canada with huge numbers of faked emails that pretend to provide updated information about coronavirus.

One example collected by California-based Proofpoint pretends to be from the Public Health Agency of Canada but it refers to a real official from another organization and has a fake email address.

Proofpoint says the Canadian COVID-19 themed phishing campaigns are similar to emails that try to trick people to click links or attachments about the World Health Organization.

Phishing emails are a way to introduce unseen bits of coding that perform any number of harmful activities onto individual devices such as laptops and phones that are linked to corporate networks.

Proofpoint executive vice-president Ryan Kalember says phishing campaigns with coronavirus or COVID themes were first detected in January and they've continued to circulate in new forms.

Kalember says Canadians are now being targeted by two groups of known international "threat actors" — which are groups of criminals that operate from many locations.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 18, 2020.

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