If you are being offered a deal too good to be true, it’s often because there’s fraudulent or criminal activity behind it. Especially for any products or services that may require you to provide financial information for a credit check, it’s always best to go directly to an official website or fully branded store to minimize the risks identity theft and ensure you’re not dealing with a scammer.
Scammers may use your personal information to impersonate you and make purchases using your accounts, open a bank account, apply for loans or mortgages, obtain government rebates or refunds, benefit and credit payments, or income tax refunds, obtain passports, and more.
They look for credit card information, bank account details, full name and signature, date of birth, social insurance number, full address, mother’s maiden name, online usernames and passwords, driver’s license number, and passport number.
The Little Black Book of Scams, Competition Bureau Canada, Canadian Government, accessed on 16 July 2023, https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/competition-bureau-canada/en/little-black-book-scams-2nd-edition#sec03
From intelligence gathered from our fraud management team and also victims we may meet in person from time to time, we are hearing more and more that fraudsters are pretending to be a “third-party vendor” or “authorized sales person” and enticing their victims with fake phone or plan offers that “is available only from them” so that people would be willing to send them their ID including personal and financial information. There should be red flags warning you to be careful if someone contacts you and says these things.
Even worse, most often people are asked to send this sensitive information using unsecure channels such as email, or even unencrypted social media platforms like WeChat, so any hacker monitoring for this will easily get your information as well. All legitimate business should always be trying to keep client information safe, so we will never ask for such personal or financial information using social media or calling you for it over the phone.
Protect yourself by always ensuring that you are dealing only with authorized personnel by visiting an officially branded store in person, visiting the company’s official website directly (not a link someone else provides you), or finding the company’s official phone number and call them directly instead.
For more information and ways to protect yourself that are found on trusted government resources, please see the links below:
Consumer Protection Ontario – Identify a scam or fraud
Canada Revenue Agency – Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft
To give yourself an extra layer of protection, you may wan to look at TELUS Online Security or visit one of our stores so that we may be able to review your needs and the options available to help you.