German police have warned people not to post images of their vaccination passports on social media to brag to their friends, as the information could be used by fraudsters.
The German police released a statement on Thursday urging people not to post pictures of their vaccination passports after they receive vaccines for the Wuhan virus, saying that criminals could use the data to create fake passports.
“Criminals use the data disseminated in this way (e.g. the batch number of the vaccine shown or the address) to falsify vaccination passports and offer them for sale on the internet,” the police warned.
According to the police, they have already observed fraudulent coronavirus vaccine passports being offered for sale on social media and claimed that the criminals creating the fake documents had used numbers from pictures of real passports they had found posted by individuals online.
According to a report from the German tabloid Bild, a 27-year-old from Berlin was arrested this week for trading in fake coronavirus vaccine passports and was in possession of 46 vaccination passport books and 33 vaccination stickers.
Police also discovered the man was in possession of 20 grams of cocaine, a kilogram of amphetamines, and 1,400 millilitres of anabolic steroids. Investigators also seized thousands of counterfeit euros and a shotgun.
A search on social media under the term “corona impfung,” German for “corona vaccination” reveals several people who have not listened to the German police advice as they have posted parts of their vaccination passport online.
On social media photo-sharing website Instagram, the hashtag #coronaimpfung gives nearly 14,000 results, many of which are pictures of vaccination passports.
Fake negative coronavirus tests have been an issue in some countries over the course of the pandemic, such as Greece, where police caught criminals selling fake medical certificates along the Greek border with Bulgaria in July of last year.
In February of this year, the European police agency Europol warned of a growing trend of criminal gangs looking to profit from forged tests, with criminals caught selling documents for between £130 and £260 ($180-$360) at Paris’s Charles De Gaulle airport.