Brenda Sawatzky, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Niverville Citizen

If you own a phone, whether a landline or mobile device, there’s a high likelihood you’ve been targeted by scammers.

You know the ones. The stranger who texts and then attempts to continue the conversation when you tell them they have the wrong number. The credit card company that calls to inform you about unusual charges. The Canada Post parcel that can’t be delivered unless you provide more information.

And in the time it’s taken to list those few, new scams are being fabricated and perpetrated.

If you think you can’t fall victim, think again. Digital crime now ranks as one of the most profitable forms of theft.

“According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, between January 1 and June 30, 2024, there have been 15,941 reported victims of fraud in Canada, with $284 million lost to fraudulent activity,” states the Canada Safety Council website. “Given the nature of cybercrime, it is likely that instances are underreported due to victims feeling shame at having been ensnared.”

Further, they say, over 350,000 cybercrimes were reported to police across Canada in 2023, a jump of 14 percent from the previous year.

It all begins with accessing your personal data, primarily your contact information. Every time an organization with which you’re affiliated experiences a data breach, your personal information falls prey to someone with nefarious intentions.

Hearing about new data breaches, these days, is almost as common as hearing about new scams. In the past year alone, Google, Apple, Facebook, WestJet, Canada Revenue Agency, and the federal government are among those who’ve been hit.

Closer to home, cybersecurity breaches have been reported by the Niverville Credit Union, various school divisions, as well as the RM of Ritchot. 

Scam Experiences 

Countless locals are hit by phishing scams on a daily basis. Phishing is a term used to describe solicitation by a scammer who poses as a legitimate business or organization.

In the last two months, Stacy McClinton says she’s received at least a half-dozen fake job offers by text from someone posing as an HR rep from a popular online job search site.

“I’m not surprised scammers are using fraudulent job listings to collect information, and it makes sense that these scams have increased,” McClinton says. “People are eager for new [job] opportunities.”

She’s never fallen for one, she says, but she assumes they might be out to trick people into sending money for training, equipment, or processing fees, since most of the job offers are for work-from-home positions.

“It’s unfortunate that scammers are using the hope of employment to prey on people who are genuinely looking for work,” says McClinton. “In today’s economy, where finding employment can be challenging, these tactics exploit vulnerability and trust, taking advantage of individuals at a moment when they are feeling hopeful and motivated.”

For Rozz Nicole, dealing with phone scams has become a regular part of her routine.

“Yesterday I received a phone call and the person on the other end advised me they were calling from WestJet Mastercard Rewards Fraud Centre,” Nicole says. “It sounded very official to begin with. They rattled off my email address and my home address, which I thought was weird, but it was all correct. I checked the phone number on my call display and it matched the customer service number on the back of my WestJet card.”

Citing fraudulent charges on her credit card, they indicated that a new one would be issued. All she had to do was verify, over the phone, the numbers on her existing card. That’s when she knew it was a scam and promptly hung up.

“What if this is done to an elderly person that doesn’t catch on and recites their credit card information,” says Nicole. “The call sounded so legit, until they made some little mistakes.”

To prevent this kind of thing, she adds, legitimate businesses and organizations need to do a better job of protecting the personal information they collect.

Alisha Sobering received a phone call from someone posing as a Google representative, wanting to sell her a subscription to the voice recognition option which would allow her to run online searches by voice command.

“It was presented as a company that works with the voice recognition for Bixby, Alexa, and Google,” Sobering says. “I didn’t give any payment info, but they did ask questions, trying to verify my identity.” 

Expert Advice 

Michael Jensen of Ste. Agathe resident is an award-winning cybersecurity expert. Jensen has worked in cybersecurity for the federal government, including Canada’s defence department.

“I wish we weren’t living in such scary times,” says Jensen. “I wish my profession didn’t mean that I had to be constantly warning people of all the different ways that criminals are trying to steal from them. But the truth is that there is a lot of crime going on between phone scams and cyberactivity and there is a lot that people need to know in order to stay vigilant and keep themselves secure.”

When it comes to phone scams, Jensen says perpetrators are mostly after money, not personal data. If you receive surveys or QR codes by text, then the goal is likely to get your personal data—data which might help reveal passwords.

It’s difficult to make oneself less of a target for phone criminals, but most modern cellphones do have a way to report a suspicious call as a scam.

“The more people take the time to do this, the more it helps everybody,” says Jensen. “You may have received a call from a number and your phone says ‘Suspected Fraud.’ This is because enough people have marked the call as a scam so the phone companies place that call into a suspected fraud category to warn recipients.”

As well, he encourages people to report suspected scams to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre in order to red-flag them with the authorities.

 There’s a number of key things people can listen for in order to determine whether the call or text they’re receiving is a scam.

These include requests for personal information. There might be a sense of urgency to act or the use of threatening language. Some make demands for immediate payment of an outstanding bill or suggest unusual payment requests like gift cards, wire transfers, or cryptocurrency. All of these are red flags.

Always be wary of unsolicited offers of prizes, estate inheritances, or easy money to be made.

You can protect yourself by not answering any calls from numbers you don’t recognize. If it’s an unfamiliar number, let it go to voicemail.

Use the call-blocking services offered by your cell service provider.

If you answer and the caller claims to be from a bank or agency you deal with, hang up and call them back using the number listed on their website.

Never, ever, give out personal information over the phone, such as credit card details, personal identification numbers, or passwords.

Finally, practice scepticism with every incoming call from an unfamiliar number.

If you’ve ever received a scam call or text from a phone number with a local area code, or even a number that’s familiar to you, it’s called number-spoofing and it uses a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

Jensen says VoIP has been around for decades and was created for very legitimate uses.

VoIP allows employees who work remotely to make calls from their cellphone. It shows up on the recipient’s call display as the company number. This feature allows survey companies to reach out to clients using the number of the company who hired them in order to ensure client engagement.

“It’s not a difficult thing to do with the right equipment,” says Jensen. “Unfortunately, scammers tend to take good tools and use them for bad.”

New technologies and techniques keep upping the deception game. For this article, Jensen covers four primary scams that everyone should be aware of. 

Voice-Cloning 

Probably one of the scariest scams of late involves voice-cloning technology. Made possible through AI, voice-cloning is an effective way for scammers to disguise their voice to sound like someone’s family member or familiar friend.

It’s been used to trick grandparents into believing they’re having a phone conversation with their grandchild when in fact it’s a complete stranger. Typically, when they call, the pseudo-grandchild is in desperate straits, perhaps needing bail money after a drunk-driving incident has landed them in jail.

It’s also been reportedly used as a tool to gain quick ransom money from someone when a would-be abductor claims to have their family member. The call comes in from what appears to be the abductee’s cellphone number and the loved one’s voice is heard pleading in the background.

Oftentimes these calls are strategically placed late at night or in the wee hours of the morning, when the victim is tired and more likely to worry.

According to Jensen, voice-cloning takes just seconds for a skilled person to accomplish. A little research on the social media pages of the person whose voice they’ve cloned then leads the perpetrator to names of family members they can target.

“The best tip I have for this scam is for families to talk openly and agree on a safety phrase to prove that the person calling is real,” says Jensen. “It should be more than a single word. It could be like, ‘There just aren’t any rock bands like Queen anymore.’ Something that the family will remember but can’t be easily googled about them.”

If the suspicious caller can’t provide the agreed-upon phrase, tell them you’ll hang up and call them back. When you call directly, you’ll reach the real cellphone and the real owner. 

Pig-Butchering Scams 

When you receive a random text from someone who appears to have the wrong number, there’s nothing random about it.

This scam doesn’t hide behind soft euphemisms. It’s called pig-butchering because they’re fattening the proverbial pig before the kill. In real life, the caller’s goal is to gain your trust by establishing a relationship with you, spend time grooming you, and then, eventually, convince you to invest in a fake opportunity.

“This is a huge scam that is being mostly perpetrated from countries like China, Cambodia, and Myanmar, and they’re targeting Canadians at an alarming rate. It’s extremely successful and they are very tightly controlled operations. In 2024, it was estimated that this scam led to the theft of $75 billion U.S. over four years. And what is even more tragic is that many of the people who are texting you are likely human slaves who were kidnapped and are being forced to work in compounds. There are many stories of people who accepted jobs to work in Myanmar or China only to be kidnapped and forced into these terrible operations where they are given multiple cellphones and call lists and are expected to make quotas.”

Jensen says these calls or texts should always be reported on the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre’s site. It might be the only way for these people to regain their freedom. 

QR Code Scams 

QR codes are a recognized tool used by many businesses and organizations to bring people to their websites quickly and effectively.

Restaurants use them to take you to their online menus. They appear on parking meters to help you pay with ease.

The ease of this technology, of course, isn’t lost on scammers. QR codes can be sent via text from what appears to be a legitimate company for a legitimate purpose. Falsified QR code stickers are beginning to appear in bus terminals, doctor’s offices, and on parking meters.

Before you know it, you’ve loaded a dangerous website onto your phone.

“My recommendation is to use QR codes as little as possible. Just type out the correct website address, which is often listed near the QR code anyway,” says Jensen. “This is less convenient, but scam artists rely on your need for convenience in order to successfully scam you. Often just taking a few extra seconds can be the difference between being scammed and being safe.” 

Survey Scams 

Most people tend find phone surveys annoying. Still, Jensen says, it’s been an effective tool for scammers.

Generally speaking, survey requests become more frequent around elections or major news events.

“When it’s a scam, the entire goal is to determine if your phone number is active and also to pepper in questions that might be used later in order to scam you on a follow-up scam. Survey scams are rarely about the big score and more about reconnaissance for setting up a larger scam later.”

The best tip Jensen has is to be very partial to the surveys you fill out, ensuring their legitimacy before you take part.

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