Among all the coronavirus scams that Joan Donovan has been tracking in the last three months, one has stuck with her: an app promising to detect contact with an infected person, but that actually froze the device and demanded a bitcoin ransom.

Donovan, research director of Harvard Kennedy’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, where she tracks disinformation campaigns, has seen her fair share of malware-related scams during her career. Yet this app seemed particularly cruel, given the country’s current widespread isolation.


“If you were to be a person whose lone source of connection in the world right now is through telephone,” she said, to be locked out of that at a time when you can't access support, and that you are feeling really alone, that could be potentially deadly.”