Courtesy of fightfraud.nv.gov

The next time that the Canada Revenue Agency contacts you, don’t be too quick to give out any information. A good number of people are being scammed by what they believe is the CRA. This is how the scam works. You receive a telephone call, letter, or email from what appears to be the CRA asking for personal information – social insurance number, credit card info, bank info, or passport number. This is a copy of the fraudulent letter being circulated. It all seems to be legitimate and because we trust and or fear the Canada Revenue Agency we are all too quick to provide what ever information they are asking for. The problem is that the CRA hasn’t asked for the info and you’ve just been scammed.

The CRA will never ask for your social insurance number in an insecure way.

The CRA does not have people’s email addresses.

What can you do?

• NEVER provide personal information.
• Unsolicited e-mails claiming to be sent from the CRA should be deleted immediately.
• Do not follow any links listed in the e-mails claiming to be sent from the CRA as these websites contain harmful software.
• If you have an accountant, contact him/her before you take any action.
• Contact Phonebusters immediately.

This is not the first time that scam artists have pretended to be from the CRA. In fact this is the third year in a row where there has been a similar scam. In 2007 there was an email scam where what appeared to be a request from the CRA asked for personal financial information and directed people to phony websites. In 2008 documents were sent out from what appeared to be the CRA saying that there was insufficient information regarding tax returns, with instructions to fill out an enclosed form with personal financial data and return it by mail. Beware of communications from the CRA.

Courtesy of earneasily.org

Everything gets recycled these days including scams. An old Internet scam has resurfaced in Toronto. The scam is very simple to perpetrate. A scam artist hacks into a private email account and changes the password rendering the account inaccessible to the owner. Pretending to be the legitimate owner of the email account the scam artist blasts out an email to everyone in the address book of the email account owner saying that they are stranded somewhere overseas and need money to get home. They request that you send the funds via Western Union. About a year ago I received an email from an acquaintance telling me that he was stranded somewhere in the UK and had no money. I immediately deleted it. What amazes me is how many people get taken and actually send money. Does common sense fly out the window when someone sends an email asking for funds?

Think about it, if you had a friend who was traveling overseas and legitimately found themselves stranded without funds, would they send you what amounts to a form email and ask you to send funds via Western Union? No, of course they wouldn’t. In the first place they would call you collect and tell you the story about how they arrived at this most unfortunate situation. If you agreed to send funds they would ask how you were sending them and you would make the arrangements to send the money. Or, you would simply contact who ever needed to be paid – airline, hotel, etc – and arrange to make payment by credit card.

Think before you do something that clearly doesn’t make sense. As long as people continue to use bad judgment, there will be scam artists standing ready to take their money.