[imagesource: Getty]

We knew we wouldn’t hear the last of it when we reported that people were travelling with fake negative COVID-19 certificates last year in November.

Now, with the vaccine rollout happening all over the world, it’s fake vaccine cards that we have to worry about.

They’re as easy to get your hands on as the recipe for banana bread or pineapple beer on the internet.

VICE‘s Joseph Cox looked into just how easy it would be to get his hands on one, and he didn’t have to look further than Etsy.

The vaccination cards that he found are mostly marketed to Americans, but there’s also a black market boom in Africa, although experts aren’t sure of the extent of the demand in South Africa.

Cox found someone on Etsy selling vaccination cards that are more long-lasting and on a more convenient sheet of wallet-sized metal than the thin cardboard copies that US healthcare facilities give out.

It looks as though the actual service offered on Etsy was one that converts your paper vaccine card into a more durable metal one, but the fact that the seller didn’t follow up on the information provided, meant that what Cox received was effectively a fake.

I ordered the card on April 16 and received the item around two weeks later. The listing said that the seller required a photograph of my real vaccination card to process the order, but I just sent the seller a message with the information I wanted on the card instead. It cost $15 plus shipping (that’s around R217)

Image: Joseph Cox

The purchase highlights the difficulties states and businesses may face when reopening and verifying whether people have been vaccinated or not before granting entry or providing certain services, especially if they rely on the CDC-stamped vaccination cards. This summer, for example, the hacking conference DEF CON plans to run in-person in Las Vegas, and said attendees must be vaccinated. The prospect of easy to source fake vaccination cards may complicate those and other verification efforts.

The sale of fraudulent COVID-19 vaccine documents is strictly prohibited on Etsy, according to an Esty spokesperson.

“We actively monitor our marketplace for these types of listings and use both manual and automatic controls to monitor our site, and we also look to our community of users to report problematic listings via our site-wide flagging tool.”

Etsy removed the seller from the site within an hour of their page being created.

Of course, the card is not a particularly convincing fake, unlike some of the cardboard ones on the market that imitate the cards dealt out at vaccination stations, but it still raises questions as to how entities hope to verify someone’s vaccination status when it is relatively easy to purchase a knock-off card.

The FBI also made it known that making or buying fake COVID-19 vaccination cards puts everyone in danger and is a major crime.

It’s also not worth the risk. We have to play it down the line if we want to beat this pandemic.

No shortcuts.

[source:vice]