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Social media often plays a positive role in today’s society, but one has to exercise caution to avoid getting taken in by the growing number of scammers online, says Arviat Mayor Joe Savikataaq Jr.
Savikataaq said there’s more and more scammers who are becoming increasingly creative when it comes to conning people out of their hard-earned money.
He said the scammers have also been aided recently by the onset of artificial intelligence, which often makes it nearly impossible to tell if their pitch is fake or real.
“People should be wary and very mindful of anyone who is texting, calling or e-mailing you to get your personal information,” said Savikataaq Jr. “I’m not really into social media. I’d rather talk with people face to face or on CB radio, which is still a big thing here in Arviat.
“You could say the CB radio is a bit of an old-school form of social media where there’s no data, no monthly fees, nothing. You just talk and it’s totally unscripted.
“I guess people like social media and that’s the way everything is going now, towards that. But, I think, there comes a point in time where it starts to get negative.
“Someone might post about their trip to some exotic places, doing this and doing that, and some people start to wonder why they can’t do this or do that themselves and it can turn negative quickly. There are positives about social media, but there are also negatives.”
Savikataaq Jr. said it angers him when he hears of someone being taken advantage of on social media and falling for a fraudulent pitch of some kind.
He said if anyone is unsure about an e-mail that they’re receiving, they should never open any attachments that came with it.
“There’s been cases here in Arviat where people were taken advantage of by scammers and seriously hurt financially. If a deal sounds too good to be true, then it’s probably not true. It’s someone trying to get your information so they can steal your hard-earned money.
“There have been cases where people thought they were getting an extremely-cheap snowmobile or ATV and they lost their money. They never heard from the people who contacted them again. In the real world, there’s no brand-new Ski-Doo that’s really, really cheap. It just doesn’t exist in reality.”
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