Fake vaccine passports, digital or not, are causing so much trouble down in New South Wales, Australia that authorities are forced to amend public health orders faster than they wanted to.
According to 7News Australia, the changes to the NSW public health order was officially signed by Health Minister Brad Hazzard on Tuesday, October 26th.
With the change, people who use fake vaccine passports will either be fined or face jail time.
As per the official ruling, it reads:
"A person must not provide, display or produce to another person information or evidence, including vaccination evidence, purporting to show the person is a fully vaccinated person, unless the information or evidence is true and accurate."
There's no official word on how harsh the penalties can get. But breaching NSW public health protocols do state that offenders will be fined as much as AU $11,000 (around US $8,274) at the time of this writing), serve a six-month jail sentence, or both.
NSW has been experiencing an influx of anti-vaccine propaganda from groups of people lately, and these same people are using fake vaccine passports to gain freedoms only meant for fully vaccinated folks.
This comes after security experts warned the Australian government that the national vaccine passport can be faked in as little as 10 minutes, reports ABC News.
Vaccine passport systems, most of them digital, have been implemented by a lot of cities and countries all over the world as a way of curbing rising COVID-19 cases and furthering vaccination goals.
Still, a lot of people remain skeptical of inoculation despite the slew of positive information regarding the effectiveness of any available COVID vaccine when it comes to preventing serious illness/hospitalization and death in afflicted patients.
How Are Fake Vaccine Passports Being Made?
One could assume that different people have different ways of producing fake vaccine passports. But one thing is certain: they can do it fast.
It was previously mentioned that a typical COVID vaccine passport in Australia can be faked in less than ten minutes. However, a few sites on the web have shown that they can fake these certifications in mere seconds.
As such, fake vaccine passports are proving to be big business for those who simply refuse to be inoculated--and want other people to do the same.
One example is a woman from the United States who was caught selling counterfeit COVID vaccine cards to people from the New York area. The suspect, who goes by the name "AntiVaxMomma" on Instagram, reportedly sold the fake cards for $200 each, reports NPR.org.
To achieve the scam, the suspect works with a partner who secretly enters names into a public vaccination database. This is to ensure that when the cards' QR codes get scanned, the unvaccinated individual's name would show up in the records and authorities will be none the wiser.
QR codes and similar measures have been largely used to secure vaccine passport systems all around the globe. But perhaps it is time to make these systems far more secure than they used to.
Related: UNC Students 'Knew How to Buy Fake Vaccine Cards' to Comply with University Shot Requirement
This article is owned by Tech Times
Written by RJ Pierce
