Fraud - Volume 1

Previously, we spoke about fraud especially for tax season and now we are going to tell you some of the most popular ways scammers use to rob you and some advices of how protect yourself from it. Now the tax season is gone, but now it’s a good opportunity for robbers to get your money.

Scammers target people of all backgrounds, ages and income levels. Be aware of some methods used to protect yourself.

In this first delivery, we are going to show you some of most popular scams after tax season. Remember, scammers look for all people who got refund in their taxes. You may be one of them, so don’t let them get you with no information.

INTERNET SCAMS

Scammers can use the Internet to promote fraud through unsolicited or junk emails, known as spam. Any email you receive that comes from a sender you do not know, is not specifically addressed to you, and promises you some benefit is likely to be spam.

Phishing is all about tricking you into handing over your personal and banking details to scammers. The emails you receive might look and sound legitimate but in reality, genuine organizations like a bank or a government authority will never expect you to send your personal information by an email or online. These Web sites and emails are used to trick users into submitting personal, financial, or password data. These emails often ask for information such as credit card numbers, bank account information, social insurance numbers, and passwords that will be used to commit fraud.

After tax season, is common you receive and email indicating a refund is pending from the CRA. The email includes a link that directs consumers to a website that mimics the actual CRA. Consumers are urged to input their information before receiving the refund (email money transfer). No refund is ever issued.

The goal of criminals using brand spoofing is to lead consumers to believe that a request for information is coming from a legitimate company. In reality it is a malicious attempt to collect customer information for the purpose of committing fraud

Be smart

• Delete phishing emails. They can carry viruses that can infect your computer. Do not open any attachments or follow any links in phishing emails.

• Think about if by opening this suspect email, will I risk the security of my computer? Are the contact details provided in the email correct? Telephone your bank, financial institution or government authority to ask whether the email you received is genuine.

• Look for misspelled words. Genuine corporations check more than twice every email send to their customers, this kind of errors are very common for scammers

• If you still are not sure the authenticity of the email, don’t click in any of the link you receive in the email, go to you search engine and type the address for the website you want to go. This way you will search in the proper website and get the genuine contact information.

MOBILE PHONE SCAMS

Mobile phone scams can be difficult to recognize. Be wary of somebody who talks as if they know you. As we said in the previous blog, in a rude way, they say you need to pay a certain amount of money because you did something wrong in your taxes. Scammers talk to you with those kinds of “technical” words that you may don’t understand at once. Most people feel scare, because is the government calling you and you don t want to mess up with them. For this reason, people go an pay whatever amount they say in order to avoid future problems with CRA.

Missed call scams start by scammers calling your phone and hanging up so quickly that you can’t answer the call in time. Your phone registers a missed call and you probably won’t recognize the number. You may be tempted to call the number to find out who called you. If it is a scam, you will be paying premium rates for the call without knowing.

Text message scams work in a similar way, but through a Short Message Service (SMS). Scammers send you a text message from a number you may not recognize, but it sounds like it is from a friend—for instance: “Hi, it’s John. I’m back! When are you free to catch up?” If you reply out of curiosity, you might be charged at premium rate for SMS messages (sometimes as much as $4 for each message sent and/or received).

Be smart!

• Text “STOP” to end unwanted text messages or to end unwanted subscriptions.

• Don’t call or text phone numbers beginning with 1-900 unless you are aware of the cost involved, and carefully read any terms and conditions when texting short codes.

• Ask yourself, do I know how to stop any subscription service I want to sign up to?

These are only couple of scam you are exposed of. There are more we will tell you in the next post. If you have questions about it you can contact us and we will happy to help you.

This information is taken from www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca and “THE LITTLE BLACK BOOK OF SCAMS” from www.competitionbureau.gc.ca