Sunday, September 23, 2012 - North Shore News - A9
Phishing frauds often not reported
From page 8
One of the top five listings that pops up under “Martin Luther King” on search engines is actually run by a white supremacist group, she adds. It’s important for kids to learn they often can’t take what they see online at face value. “You have to fact check,” look for multiple sources and assess the sources, she tells them. It’s a lesson that many adults could stand to learn, says Const. Dave Townsend, who works in the economic crime unit of the North Vancouver RCMP. “Phishing” scams, where victims get sent emails making them bogus offers or asking for personal information, are common — especially on the North Shore, where scammers often target seniors. Often victims will get an officiallooking email supposedly from a bank or other legitimate organization. One recently making the rounds ostensibly came from the Canada Revenue Agency, investigating people for tax evasion. It asked victims to confirm their identity by supplying personal information. One North Vancouver woman decided to go public three years ago after she learned about scams the hard way. She was fooled by a letter from “Hotmail” asking for her password and other details. Scammers then logged into her account and started sending letters out to everyone in her address book, asking for money to cover an “emergency.” Most victims aren’t so open. “One of the huge problems with any kind of fraud is under-reporting,” says Townsend. Most people are too embarrassed to admit they’ve been duped. Some have been taken in after giving over too much personal information on questionable
websites like Backpage or AshleyMadison.com, says Gagnon. Others who’ve lost money don’t bother to report it because they figure it won’t help them get their cash back. They’re usually right, says Townsend. But by reporting the fraud, it allows antifraud investigators a means to get the sites shut down so they don’t scam other people. Instead of deleting a phishing email, Townsend says a better idea is to forward it to the Canadian anti-fraud centre at info@ antifraudcentre.ca. There, investigators mine the email for data that will sometimes connect it to other frauds. Similar scams are also conducted by cellphone and text messages. In some cases, cyber criminals will redirect computer users away from legitimate websites to “spoofed” sites that they control. Some victims on the North Shore have lost massive amounts of money in online scams. “We’ve had cases in North Vancouver that are well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” says Townsend. One retired health-care worker lost $129,000. “It’s heartbreaking,” says Townsend. “His pension is gone.” “That’s not even the worst case,” he said — that clocks in with a loss of more than $500,000. Townsend said he doesn’t see those duped online as any more gullible than people duped in other more traditional ways — such as bogus stock market investments. “A lot of people invested in Bre-X too,” he says. “People have lost a lot of their skepticism.” Depending on what information they get, cyber criminals can use what victims divulge to See Online page 11
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