Financial Literacy Month: Fraud awareness

So far in 2020 the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre has received more than 40,000 fraud reports from Canadians, involving more than 19,000 victims with reported losses in excess of $67 million.

November is Financial Literacy Month and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre wants to help Canadians be fraud aware. This bulletin was prepared to highlight the Top 10 frauds, based on data from January 1 to August 31, 2020, and to provide prevention tips to help Canadians avoid fraud.

Note: It is estimated that less than 5% of fraud victims report their occurrences to the CAFC.

How to protect yourself

• Do not trust the information on your call display because it can easily be manipulated
• Do not provide your personal or financial information on demand
• Do not open an attachment or click a link in an unsolicited email or text message
• Create a unique and complicated password for each of your accounts
• Setup multi-factor authentication to make it more difficult for someone else to access your accounts
• Update the privacy settings attached to your social network accounts
• Be familiar with the terms of service and how payment methods work before using them
• Never, under any circumstances, accept money and send money to a third party
  • You may, unknowingly, be participating in money laundering which is a criminal offence
• Avoid reacting automatically
  • #Take5 minutes to ask additional questions and listen to your instincts
  • If something doesn't seem right, ask someone else about it
• Remain current on frauds and protect others by sharing what you know
  • #Tell2 and ask them to do the same
  • An unbroken chain of 26 Tell2'ers would cover the entire population of Canada
• Learn more tips and tricks for protecting yourself

Date modified:

2020-10-30