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Stay Safe from Scams with these 5 Tips
Fraudsters continue to devise new ways to separate Canadians from their hard-earned cash, with more than 20,000 reports involving more than $43 million in losses in 2019. Staying vigilant is difficult when new scams are appearing every day. The Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada have detailed the most common scams to watch out for here. From social insurance numbers to email transfer requests, prepare for everything with these tips:
- Fraudsters may try to catch you off guard by calling early in the morning, even while you’re sleeping. They will often manufacture a crisis. For example: your SIN number has been compromised, a warrant is out for your arrest, a suspicious charge has been detected on your credit card. These approaches are designed to rattle you.
- Don’t trust your call display. This can be manufactured relatively easily. On the flip side, never answer a phone call from an unidentified caller — let it go to voice mail!
- A reputable organization, bank or financial institution will never call and ask you to: transfer money to an external account for safety, send money to them or provide personal or sensitive information. If you are unsure about a call, hang up, source the number from the company or organizations website and call them directly.
- Watch for typos in the text of the email. In phishing emails, the $ sign often appears after the dollar amount instead of before.
- If you receive a deposit or money transfer request you weren’t expecting, contact the sender through a different channel (for example, you receive an email transfer request from your boss. Call them to confirm before clicking on the email).
Learn more ways to protect yourself from scams at the CPA website here and here!
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