ALERTS

Fraud...Recognize it. Report it. Stop it.

The Face of Fraud--It's Not Who You Think

Believe it or not, there is no typical fraud victim in Canada, but research finds that fraud victims are likely to be educated, informed, relative affluent and involved in their communities.

Your risk of becoming a fraud victim  is not linked to your age, ethnicity, income or geographic location.  Scammers don't care about any of that --they just want your money.

Thousands of Canadians are defrauded each year.  Scam artists are up to date and well-organized.  they use the latest trends and sophisticated techniques:

• Professional marketing materials
• Well-crafted and resarched telephone scripts, which are traded among criminals
• Friendly tone and "generous" offers
• Believable answers for your tough questions
• Ability to impersonate legitimate businesses, charities and causes.
• Expertise to use your own emotions against you.

These are professional criminals.  They know what they're doing and, unfortunately for their victims they do it well.

Read more about Fraud...Recognize it. Report it. Stop it.

Pharming & Phishing

Pharming

Pharming is when criminal hackers redirect Internet traffic from one website to a different, identical-looking site in order to trick you into entering your user name and password into the database on their fake site.  Banking or similar financial sites are often the target of these attacks, in which criminals try to acquire your bank account, steal your identity, or commit other kinds of fraud in your name.

Fend off Phishing

“We suspect an unauthorized transaction on your account.  To ensure that your account is not compromised, please click the link below and confirm your identity.”

“During our regular verification of accounts, we couldn’t verify your information.  Please click here to update and verify your information.”

Have you received e-mail with a similar message?  It’s a scam called “phishing” – and it involves internet fraudsters who send spam or pop-up messages to lure personal information (credit card numbers, bank account information, social insurance numbers, passwords, or other sensitive information) from unsuspecting victims.

In computing, phishing (also known as carding and spoofing) is a form of social engineering, characterized by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an e-mail or an instant message.  The term phishing arises from the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to “fish” for users’ financial information and passwords.

Read more about Pharming & Phishing