African Children’s Fund is a legitimate non-governmental organization that does phenomenal work to improve the lives of children throughout Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The organization’s official website is africanchildrensfund.org.

Unfortunately, scammers have recently been impersonating African Children’s Fund, with the goal of stealing people’s money and personal data. Keep on reading to learn everything you need to know.

African Children’s Fund/African Child Fund Scam

Scammers have created a website called African Child Fund under the domain www.africanchildsfund[.]org. To be clear, this website is in no way affiliated with African Children’s Fund. The scammers are hoping people will be deceived by the similarity in the fake website’s name to African Children’s Fund and donate their money — which will go straight into the scammers’ pockets.

The fake website was created on May 12, 2022, making it exceptionally new. The owner of the site is also using domain privacy to hide his/her name. These are both huge red flags that the website is not to be trusted.

African Child Fund Text Message Phishing Scam

To drive traffic to their scam website, the scammers have been sending phishing text messages to potential victims. Here is an example of one of the messages:

• children are literally dying every day. save a dying child today head to africanchildsfund[.]org to find out more. remember donating is a great tax write off

The scammers are hoping people will read the message, head to their fake charity website, and donate.

People who are tricked into donating to the fake charity will lose any money they send, but they will also have shared their valuable personal information — things such as their name, address, and payment information — with the scammers, too. The scammers may use this to commit various cybercrimes, including, potentially, identity theft.

Want to donate to African Children’s Fund?

If you’ve received a text message and you’re not sure whether it was sent by African Children’s Fund or not, but you still want to donate, the best thing to do is to head over to African Children’s Fund’s official website, africanchildrensfund.org. From there, you can choose to make either a single donation or a monthly donation.

How to Protect Yourself

• Double-check the sender’s mobile number/email address.
• Be suspicious of free gifts or prizes as these are highly likely to be dangerous.
• Regarding charities, always do your research into the organization. These are good links: Charity Navigator & Charity Watch.
• Keep an eye out for tell-tale signs of scams: grammatical mistakes, grand claims, exclamation marks (!).
• Never click links or attachments from unknown sources. Use Trend Micro ScamCheck to detect scams with ease!