The Daily Threat of Cyber Scams and How to Stay Safe!

The threat of scams is not new… snake oil sales­man and con artists have been around since bib­li­cal times. The chal­lenge is how to stay one step ahead of the lat­est great­est con, the cyber scam.
The advent of the inter­net and social media has cre­at­ed a vast play­ground for many crim­i­nals. How­ev­er, this new play­ground is much more dif­fi­cult to police, and enforce safe­ty mea­sures. In today’s world, we are often left to our own resources to pro­tect our­selves.
In recent times we have seen online scams become much more cre­ative. Thieves seem to man­age new tech­nol­o­gy very well. Here are a few things to watch for.
Phish­ing scams: In this type of case the fraud­ster will attempt to trick you via an email, text or social media post by imper­son­at­ing a legit­i­mate orga­ni­za­tion, like a bank, where you may have deal­ings. They want you to click a link to a site that looks legit­i­mate but is just a trick to get you to reveal your login infor­ma­tion to your actu­al account.
The Niger­ian Scam: You will receive an emo­tion­al email, text mes­sage or social net­work­ing mes­sage com­ing from a scam­mer (which can appear to be an offi­cial gov­ern­ment mem­ber, a busi­ness­man or a mem­ber of a wealthy fam­i­ly, often a woman) who asks you to give help in retriev­ing a large sum of mon­ey from a bank. They attempt to con­vince you to ini­tial­ly pay small fees for papers and legal mat­ters. In exchange for your help, they promise you a very large sum of mon­ey. Of course this is just the begin­ning to extort more and more mon­ey from you. Some extreme cas­es have result­ed in kid­nap­ping.
Elec­tron­ic Greet­ing Card Scam: In this case you will receive what appears to be an inno­cent greet­ing e‑card from a friend in your email inbox. When you take the bait and click the link to view the card, you are instead down­load­ing mali­cious ran­som-ware or mal­ware onto your com­put­er. In this unfor­tu­nate event, your com­put­er will start send­ing pri­vate data and finan­cial infor­ma­tion to a fraud­u­lent serv­er con­trolled by IT crim­i­nals.
Guar­an­teed Cred­it Card or Bank Loan offers: You will receive an email or social media offer for a “guar­an­teed cred­it card or bank loan” with great terms. All you have to do is con­firm your inter­est and pay a “small” pro­cess­ing fee. This is at best an attempt to get a small amount of mon­ey from many peo­ple, at worst it con­vinces you to pro­vide them with your cred­it card infor­ma­tion.
Cana­da Rev­enue Agency Scams: The CRA scams can take var­i­ous forms. In some cas­es, they prey on those wait­ing for refunds and ask you for your bank­ing infor­ma­tion to use as direct deposit. In oth­er cas­es threat­en­ing calls or emails are sent demand­ing imme­di­ate pay­ment of sup­posed over­due tax­es due to a reassess­ment. Of course, this is untrue but play­ing on peo­ples’ fears of the tax­man, the demands can be to pay imme­di­ate­ly by cred­it card, e‑transfer, mon­ey wires, even bit­coin!
These are only a few exam­ples of a con­stant­ly evolv­ing cyber threat we all face. Our chal­lenge is to stay one step ahead of the con artists. How do you do that? Here are a few flags to watch for:
1. Scam­mers gen­er­al­ly want you to take IMMEDIATE action. Watch for key­words such as “late penal­ty” or “lim­it­ed time offer” or “only 3 spots left”. If it’s a legit­i­mate offer you will have time to ver­i­fy it. Don’t get pushed into irra­tional or quick deci­sions. NO legit­i­mate gov­ern­ment or finan­cial insti­tu­tion will behave in this man­ner. ALWAYS take the time to ver­i­fy. If in doubt…check it out.
2. Avoid sus­pi­cious web­sites. If the site seems of poor qual­i­ty or has mul­ti­ple pop-ups, these are flags it may not be a legit­i­mate site. Avoid click­ing on a pop-up or link in social media to get to your favourite retail­ers’ site. Clear your brows­er, and enter the web­site address in your­self. Keep your com­put­er soft­ware and anti-virus pro­tec­tion up to date.
3. Your mobile phone is con­ve­nient but lacks many of the secu­ri­ty fea­tures of a com­put­er such as virus pro­tec­tions etc. Avoid enter­ing your finan­cial infor­ma­tion into a web­site you accessed using your phone. If it’s a major retail­er you are more secure down­load­ing their App, which will have more secu­ri­ty fea­tures. Avoid doing finan­cial trans­ac­tions on pub­lic Wifi. It’s not secure
4. No trans­ac­tion should require you to pro­vide your Social Insur­ance Num­ber or Driver’s License Num­ber. If a site is ask­ing for this info, it’s a huge flag it’s fraud­u­lent, Stop imme­di­ate­ly. And at the end of the month always check your cred­it card and bank state­ments for any unusu­al activ­i­ty.
5. Don’t friend or accept strangers friend requests on social media, If some­body you have already friend­ed sends anoth­er request, they have like­ly been hacked, DON’T accept. Peri­od­i­cal­ly check your pri­va­cy set­tings. Social media sites rou­tine­ly do updates and make changes. Take the time to con­trol who has access to the infor­ma­tion you post. And use restraint on social media, avoid includ­ing your home address and any per­son­al infor­ma­tion that could allow a fraud­ster to steal your iden­ti­ty.
The biggest key to avoid­ing becom­ing a vic­tim is to stay informed and vig­i­lant. It’s when we let our guard down that the fraud­sters win. If you have more vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in your cir­cle, like chil­dren or elder­ly rel­a­tives or neigh­bours that may be more like­ly vic­tims. Take the time to dis­cuss some basic online safe­ty tips with them. If we all work togeth­er we can keep the fraud­sters at bay.