Dear Evan,

 

How interesting.  This is almost exactly the kind of thing which occupied my mind in my days with IFRC.  The difference is of course that UNICEF is an intergovernmental organisation with special resources for such stuff.

 

Most well-meaning people wouldn’t work out that this is a fake, for that would require them to notice that there is an egregious spelling mistake on the Contact Us page (see below).  Anyway, the donate button seems to have been disabled by someone, and that’s what we had to work for in IFRC as many law enforcement agencies want not just an identifiable victim but one of the same nationality as the law enforcement agency.

 

 

I also see that while I was typing this the site was given a Google warning:

 

Deceptive site ahead

Attackers on www.unicef-online.com may trick you into doing something dangerous like installing software or revealing your personal information (for example, passwords, phone numbers, or credit cards).

 

So, no longer just blown off.

 

When we found ourselves looking at these sites we normally went to the domain provider and asked it to remove the website.  If they needed persuasion we told them that the misuse and abuse of the Red Cross Red Crescent names and emblems is an offence in almost all countries of the world, and they usually did take down the site in question.  The time it took for this to happen was however often too long to save people from giving money to the scammers.  Our experience was that the scammers expect to make all their money in the first 48 hours.  They usually operate on the back of a well publicised disaster, and it’s not often that we saw a general scam like this one.  I do however remember one about ten years ago concerning the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which like this one was a complete mirror of the Agency’s site, in all the UN languages but with just a couple of relevant links switched.

 

Thanks for this.  It reminds me of many lively experiences!

 

Chris