Scams, scams, and more scams

There seems to be more and more scams out there, and probably because people are falling for them. I recently heard that a student lost quite a bit of money from their bank account as they fell for one of these scams. Nowadays, it just seems that every day you either get a phone call, email or text message that doesn’t look like. Even businesses get the scam emails, so don’t think you are alone. Below are some of the scams that we have received in the last little while, that is not including our favourite “Duct Cleaning” phone calls.

Scams:

Netflix: Your payment cannot be completed. To keep access to the service, please visit (factious website)

• If you don’t have Netflix never click on the link and even if you do have Netflix DO NOT click on this lick. To see if there is an issue with your Netflix account, go to where you would normally log in into your account and check the status of it.
  

RBC Your client card starting with 4519** has been flagged due to unusual activity. To reactivate your online access, please visit: (Factitious website)

• All RBC credit cards start with this, so that isn’t any information that is helpful. Also, most banks have other means of letting you know that there is an issue with your card. I know that when our card had some unusual activity, we received a phone call. If you think there might be something wrong with your card, DO NOT click on the link. You can sign in to your account the normal way and check your account.

[Canada-post]Your package has been put on hold because the street number is missing from the package. Please check and submit the correct address. (Factitious website)

• If you aren’t expecting a package to be delivered, just ignore this text message. If you are, contact the sender to see if they may have missed addressing it correctly. DO NOT click on the link no matter what.

Amazon: This is to inform you that today your account will be charged for Amazon Prime (funny the phone number you are calling isn’t linked to an Amazon account)

• This is a phone scam that they want you to click a number on your phone and provide them with your credit card and other personal information. DO NOT click on that number.

Email: your e-mail account has been disabled and some features might be restricted or may not work. It seems there has been a violation of the terms and conditions with your email account xx@xx.ca. If the account has been already access from unusual or suspicious locations or devices, Google might have disabled it to prevent potential unauthorized access. (now the interesting thing about this one is the account that they showed had nothing to do with Google at all and the website in the form also had nothing to do with Google)

• If you receive an email like this from a company that has nothing to do with where your email is hosted, DO NOT click on the link. Now, the other thing about this message is it contradicts itself. First it says the account has been disabled, and then it says some features might be restricted or not working. Well, if the account has been disabled, all the features won’t work.

Invoice email: Good afternoon! I am quite disappointed! Obtained the complaint from our contractor, and I have a large amount of questions. Please resolve this problem, or I shall apply legal penalties! It is very important! Copy of the complaint you’ll find via the Invoice Link lower (well we don’t do business with the company that is sending the complaint and when you read the actually working it doesn’t make sense)

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• This is something that some accounts payables or receivables may receive. Again, DO NOT click on the link that is provided. Check with others to make sure that this company is real and if not block the sending.

Summary

What I have been trying to show you is there are a lot of different methods of text, phone, and email scams that are out there. I have left the messages just as I received them to show you some of the things you can see when you take the time to really read a message. We all must be extremely careful and try and black as many of these accounts as we can. I know that it is hard to control all these scams because when one is caught, at least one more starts up, so we just must be as careful as we can.

It is very important that we start educating our kids and family members about what not to click on when they are on social media or on their email. Being able to increase the awareness of SCAMS may help fewer people become victims of them. My biggest piece of advice is if the text, or email doesn’t make sense, it’s best to ignore it.