Don’t Give Your Data to Scam Artists
Everyone has heard about the Nigerian scam letter that asks for your help to transfer a large sum of money to an organization in a foreign country. Your reward will be a percentage of that money, but first, you must tell the scammer your bank account details. Of course you didn’t fall for that, but you’d be surprised to learn how many intelligent people have been duped in this way. Here’s how scam artists work.
How They Connect

There are three common communication techniques to defraud you:
- Phishing is popular. It relies on bogus e-mails and websites to contact you and make fraudulent pitches for information. It is very easy to make an email look like it came from your CEO.
- Smishing involves phoney SMS text messages and links.
- But according to many security experts, vishing remains the most effective way to cheat people out of their confidential details. A visher phones you and gets you to reveal personal or corporate information for any number of reasons, all of them false. Vishers can sound convincing, and can inspire misplaced confidence during even a brief phone conversation.
- Of course, casual conversations with strangers in bars has never gone out of style as a way to figure out your likely passwords.
Scam artists generally manipulate you with greed fear, or your desire to be helpful.
Greed
- They may claim to be investment specialists who offer you an opportunity to make a lot of money.
- They may send a message to inform you that you have won a lot of money in a lottery, but before you receive it, you must pay legal or pre-tax fees. Please wire a sum of money to a certain account or individual as soon as possible. Believe it or not, this is one of the more successful scams.
- Bogus job offers are becoming more frequent. A scammer phones to congratulate you for getting the attention of important people, who have decided to hire you. They have a job that suits you perfectly and will give you a high salary and excellent benefits. Accept this unbeatable offer, and you will receive a signing bonus. Sound good? You bet. All the scammer needs now are your personal details, including your date of birth, SIN, bank account numbers and passwords, and you’ll get the award tomorrow…but you won’t. Your chequing and savings accounts could be emptied in minutes. An additional risk in such cases is identity theft. Scammers can be first-rate multi-taskers.
- Romance scams occur most often through social media. The scammer gets to know you—you sexy thing—and promises you the kind of love that he or she (or they, since sometimes scammers work in teams) can give you. They will send you photos of themselves, images that resemble George Clooney or Taylor Swift, or another famous entertainer. Their tones become increasingly affectionate, and you come to trust them enough to lend them money, often a large amount. You transfer the money to dear George’s account and they vanish with your money. Love can be cruel.
Fear
- They may pretend to be representatives of the CRA or IRS, and demand in threatening tones that you pay back-taxes immediately or your bank accounts will be frozen.
Asking For Help
- They can call and pretend to be police officers or bank managers involved in an undercover investigation and they need your help. They ask you not to tell anybody about it but need to be sure about your identity - your SIN and bank account details.
Just Say No
Remember that it is your right to refuse to chat with anyone on the phone or through social media. First, your bank will never call you for assistance with an undercover investigation, nor will the police. If someone asks that you keep the details of their call a secret, assume the worst about them. If someone tries to rush you to make a decision regarding any transfer of funds, ask yourself if this makes sense. If your “CEO” emails to instruct you to transfer money outside of normal procedures or share corporate information with a stranger, raise the alert with your management and take the burden off yourself.
If you’d like to comment on this article or explore these ideas further, contact me at guy
This article was published in the
January 2024
edition of The TMC Advisor
- ISSN 2369-663X Volume:11 Issue:1
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