{"id":1566,"date":"2018-06-28T23:39:44","date_gmt":"2018-06-28T23:39:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/?p=1566"},"modified":"2018-06-28T23:39:44","modified_gmt":"2018-06-28T23:39:44","slug":"protecting-yourself-from-the-cra-phone-scams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/2018\/06\/28\/protecting-yourself-from-the-cra-phone-scams\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting yourself from the CRA phone scams"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just last week I received a voicemail from someone pretending to be a Canada Revenue Agency official. This person told me that liens were going to be placed on my bank accounts because I hadn’t “paid penalties for tax evasion.” The liens would happen “later today” if I did not call back and settle up.<\/p>\n

This was a really scary voicemail. It raised my blood pressure! After a few\u00a0minutes of controlled breathing, I decided not to call back. I didn’t want to be a victim of a fraud.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I was lucky – because I did not feel the full persuasive force<\/a> of these scammers, who have been bedevilling and defrauding Canadians for the last month or so<\/a>. Many victims have heard their own bank and credit card and other personal information read back to them. Surely the caller was a government official, no?<\/p>\n

No, not a government official.<\/p>\n

Chester Wisniewski<\/a>, a friend of No Contest Communications and a researcher at Sophos<\/a>, a global firm focused on network and computer security, appeared on the CBC yesterday to talk about these scams<\/a>. Discussing the case of a recently scammed individual, Chester noted,<\/p>\n

“The information the criminals had could really have only come from his own device. The amount of information they had is beyond what a bank would have, it’s beyond what the CRA would have. The only place that all that information exists would be your own computer.” …<\/p>\n

According to Wisniewski, the con artists will often spend days gathering information they can use against their victims.<\/p>\n

“They may be criminals, but they’re not stupid,” he said. …<\/p>\n

Wisniewski said it’s crucial that people protect their information by using unique passwords for every online account. There’s software that can handle that, but keeping a handwritten list is another option.<\/p>\n

He also recommends keeping all devices up to date, installing every software update\u00a0as soon as it’s available.<\/p>\n

And any time a call comes in from someone claiming to be with the government, police\u00a0or a bank,\u00a0Wisniewski says it’s best not to agree to anything\u00a0and then call back on a verified phone number.<\/p>\n

“Because somebody calls you and has familiarity with your personal life, does not make them in a position of authority, nor someone you know,” he said.<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just last week I received a voicemail from someone pretending to be a Canada Revenue Agency official. This person told me that liens were going to be placed on my bank accounts because I hadn’t “paid penalties for tax evasion.” … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[36,74,91],"class_list":["post-1566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roberts-posts","tag-ethics","tag-persuasion","tag-scams"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nocontest.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}