Image Courtesy: Namibia Fact Check / WhatsApp
A viral WhatsApp post misleadingly entices Namibian youth into a scam by dangling a youth credit scheme ‘grant’
Phishing scams are running rampant on social media and messaging platforms.
One of the latest encountered by Namibia Fact Check in January 2024 is one calling on Namibian young people to apply for a “youth grant” to the “Namibia Youth Credit Scheme (NYCS)”.
The phishing post looks like this:
The screenshot of the post (image above) was taken in a jobseekers WhatsApp group, with over 890 members, by one of the members on 14 January 2024 and forwarded to Namibia Fact Check.
The Facts
The Namibia Youth Credit Scheme (NYCS) is a real Namibian Government initiative under the the Ministry of Sports, Youth and National Service.
The Financial Literacy Initiative also provides information on the scheme.
The phishing scam imitates the real Namibia Youth Credit Scheme (NYCS), which offers amounts between N$5,000 and N$100,000 to young Namibian entrepreneurs between the ages of 18 and 35. Importantly, the money is not disbursed as grants, but as loans.
The purpose of the phishing scam is to steal people’s personal information through a webpage questionnaire that is reached by clicking the link in the post, which does not connect to an official Namibian Government webpage, even though the webpage has Namibian Government logos on it (image below).
The information of unsuspecting people is collected through a simple questionnaire type tool that appears to “Verify” people’s identities or applications (image below).
The webpage is very similar to other phishing scam webpages that Namibia Fact Check has dealt with in the past, such as this one.