The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has warned of online scams promoting fake celebrity-endorsed investment opportunities.
The security body has taken down over 300,000 malicious URLs over the last four months.
READ: Twitter CEO apologises after high profile users hacked by Bitcoin scammers
They linked to fake investments schemes using images of Sir Richard Branson, Ed Sheeran and Martin Lewis.
“We have dealt with hundreds of instances of fake sites and fraudsters impersonating me or my team online. We are working in partnership with organisations such as NCSC to report these sites and do all we can to get them taken down as quickly as possible,” the real Branson said.
“Sadly, the scams are not going to disappear overnight, and I would urge everyone to be vigilant and always check for official website addresses and verified social media accounts.”
The Twitter scam
The warning comes a month after high-profile Twitter users, including Elon Musk, Kanye West and Barack Obama, were hacked to promote a Bitcoin scam.
The accounts shared a message that said users that sent US$1,000 to a linked Bitcoin address would see the money doubled and then returned under the guise of giving back to the community during the coronavirus pandemic.
Other prominent accounts hacked with the message were Bill Gates, Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) boss Jeff Bezos and Democratic Party presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Even companies fell victim to the hack with the message posted by accounts belonging to Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Uber Technologies Inc (NYSE:UBER).
Twitter said it believed the incident was part of a “coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools”.
Retail investment rise
The lockdown has brought to a rise in retail investing, with Robinhood posting a stellar performance of 4.31mln daily average revenue trades in June alone.
The trading app has proved popular with youngsters through its simplified app interface and a convenient way to trade stocks, leading to a ballooning market value of around US$8.3bn at its last funding round in May.
However, its reputation has recently come under pressure after that 20-year old US college student, Alexander Kearns, committed suicide in June after the app displayed a loss to his account of around US$730,000.
It later came to light that the figure may not have represented the actual losses but rather a temporary balance until the stocks underlying the options had settled in the account.
“Investment isn’t right for everyone. If, for example, you have lots of expensive debt or no cash savings, these should be your first priorities. Alternatively, if you need to spend the money within the next five years, investments won’t be suitable,” said Sarah Coles, personal finance analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.