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1. What did you learn about your topic that surprised you the most?

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1. What did you learn about your topic that surprised you the most?

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I have learned about different forms of identity theft, it’s consequences, and what to do if I become a victim of it. What mostly surprised me is I was never aware that the criminals can even pretend to be person from police force. I heard about scam call in the name of Canadian Revenue Agency or different financial institution but calling as police made me astonished.

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2. Provide a real-life example of how this topic is relevant or interesting for you.

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2. Provide a real-life example of how this topic is relevant or interesting for you.

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A few days ago, I received a call where the caller told me she was calling from my bank and gave me an offer about reducing the interest rate on my credit card. I was having little doubt as she called me from a cell number and when I received no body was talking and there were some background noises as well. But when the lady talked with me, I was totally confused! I was almost convinced! But, as soon as she asked me to spell my name, I was concerned and I didn’t give any information rather I kept asking her question and at some point, she cut the conversation. I realized that was scam call and I was saved!

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3.If you could pass on your knowledge to a family member or friend, what do you think is the most important thing to pass on?

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3.If you could pass on your knowledge to a family member or friend, what do you think is the most important thing to pass on?

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The first information I will pass is the different forms of identity theft like scam calls, phishing emails, and how sometimes our daily activity can make us identity theft victim. Then I will share what to do if someone gets victim. To me, prevention is always better than cure.

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This image gives us a brief idea about how scammers steal our identity. I have selected this image because anyone who does not have idea about identity theft, he or she will be able to get a primary idea on this topic and he will be curious to find more information about it.

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This is an infographic on identity theft. Here we can see what we need to do if a malicious individual collected enough of our personal information to carry out bank transactions and make purchases in our name. Here are some steps that we can follow to avoid such an upsetting situation. This is a simple description with picture which every one will be able to understand.

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Every year a large number of immigrants are coming to Canada from all over the world. They remain totally unaware about administrative and financial services of this country. Hence, they are particularly vulnerable for fraud activities. According to Government of Canada, fraud is the number one crime against newcomers and older people of Canada. They can receive phone calls where people can pretend as Government of Canada staff and ask for their personal information as well as money.

This website is Government of Canada’s official website where the new immigrants are warned about various fraud activities as well as suggestion has been given on what they will do if any occurrence takes place. I couldn’t pick any single information as important as the whole site seemed important to me.

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What happens: A person poses as a government official on the telephone. They call people and try to scare them by saying they have done something wrong (like not filing proper paperwork), and that they owe fees. They may say the person can lose their immigration status or be deported if they do not pay right away. These people may even threaten someone's family or home.

Things to remember

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) will never:

contact you over the telephone to collect fees or fines,

be aggressive or threaten to arrest or deport you,

threaten to harm you or a member of your family, or damage your home or property,

ask for personal information over the phone (except to verify information you already gave us),

ask for financial information over the phone,

try to rush you into paying right away,

ask you to pay fees using prepaid credit cards, Western Union, Money Gram, gift cards, or any other similar services, or

send police to arrest you for unpaid fees.

If you get a suspicious immigration call, you should:

Ask for the name of the person calling and then hang up.

Call our Call Centre to confirm that the call was real.

If the call wasn't real, report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

If you have lost money to a scam artist, report it to your local police.

If you get a suspicious call about taxes, you should:

Hang up, then confirm if the call was real by calling the Canada Revenue Agency at 1-800-959-8281.

If the call wasn't real, report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

If you have lost money to a scam artist, report it to your local police.

Note: If you use caller ID, an agency's phone number may appear real, but is not. Some scam artists use technology to fake the number, so this is not always proof that a caller is legitimate.

Fake emails

What happens: You may get an email trying to convince you to invest money or to give personal information or passwords related to your banking accounts.

What to do: Delete it. Legitimate investors don't send bulk emails to people they do not know.

Watch out for emails from a stranger that direct you to a website that asks for personal information. Never give out personal information unless you know who you are giving it to, and that the website is secure.

If you get this kind of email, don't click on any links or give any information about yourself. If you have any doubts about where the email came from, make sure to check the identity of the sender.

Fake computer virus

What happens: You may get a phone call or email saying that your computer has been infected with a virus. The caller or sender will offer to remove the virus from your computer. The person will try to get your computer passwords and other private information.

What to do: Never give access to your computer to someone you didn't contact for help. You should only have your computer fixed at a professional shop, or install anti-virus software bought from a trusted store.

Fake prizes

What happens: If you get a phone or text message that says you won something, but you did not enter a contest, it is probably a scam.

What to do: If you get a text message from a stranger, and it directs you to a form that asks you to enter any personal information, delete the text. Do not enter any information.

If the text tells you to text "stop" or "no" so you don't get more texts, delete it. Do not reply. Scam artists do this to confirm they have a real phone number. Forward the texts to 7726 (spam on most keypads). This will let your phone provider block future texts from those numbers. If you think your text message is real, check that the link it is sending you to is the correct website.

Tips on how to avoid being a victim of fraud.

Contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre to report fraud, and to find out about other fraud like online dating scams, door-to-door scams and fake bills.

Read about laws in place to protect the public from fraud by province.

Report a problem or mistake on this page

Thank you for your help!

You will not receive a reply. For enquiries, contact us.

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Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada

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What happens: A person poses as a government official on the telephone. They call people and try to scare them by saying they have done something wrong (like not filing proper paperwork), and that they owe fees. They may say the person can lose their immigration status or be deported if they do not pay right away.

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All most all Canadians have received the scam call in the name of Canada Revenue Agency even for once. In the past, the scammers pretended to collect taxes on behalf of Canada Revenue Agency and frauded people of millions of dollars. However, the frauds have come up with a new idea over the old scam calls. They are now pretending to be local police force and ask for personal information as well as money.

This new method of scam calls and the consequences of it has been described thoroughly in this website. Moreover, ctv news is Toronto’s local TV channel where latest news is always telecasted. These are some reasons why I choose this website. A few days ago, I received a call like this and I was very scared. I didn’t know that they can call as police officer! Fortunately, I didn’t give them any information as I felt doubt at one point of conversation. From this website I came to know that these criminals can pretend to be anyone! So, this piece of information was important to me.

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TORONTO -- Scammers have defrauded Canadians out of tens of millions of dollars over the past decade pretending to be collecting back taxes with the Canada Revenue Agency-but police are warning of a new twist on the old scam.

The scammers are pretending to be officers with local police forces, investigators said.

The thieves are also using caller ID spoofing so it looks like the call is coming from a police phone number.

Toronto Police Const. David Hopkinson said that officers do not collect taxes on behalf of the government.

"The Toronto Police isn't involved with the Canada Revenue Agency with regards to the collection of money and the Canada Revenue Agency does not collect money in this fashion," he said. "Just because it says police there are ways to change the identification on the phone to say police."

In the past few weeks, Toronto police say one victim gave the scammers $1,200 using a Bitcoin machine after he was told he would be deported if he didn't pay.

A woman was told her Social Insurance Number was being used for fraudulent activity and she must immediately pay $1,000 or she would be arrested. She also paid in Bitcoin.

The Canada Revenue Agency will never call and use nasty language or threaten a customer. They will also never ask for credit card information, personal information by email or text, or request your social insurance number or ask for bank account information.

If you get a call that seems suspicious, do not engage the caller and just hang up.

"We need to get the message out so people aren't giving up their money to scammers on the phone," Hopkinson said.

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Police warn of new twist in phone scam targeting Canadians

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TORONTO -- Scammers have defrauded Canadians out of tens of millions of dollars over the past decade pretending to be collecting back taxes with the Canada Revenue Agency-but police are warning of a new twist on the old scam. The scammers are pretending to be officers with local police forces, investigators said.

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Although, none is completely safe from various sophisticated tricks of identity theft, yet it is better to be cautious than to be victim of it as being a victim of identity theft can be financially and emotionally devastating. One can save him/her from being victim of identity theft by taking some simple steps under consideration. Such as, checking bank statement, credit report regularly, not sharing excess information on social media, using strong password online and last but not least reviewing each transition.

I have selected this website as Equifax is a well-known global data, analytics, and technology company. In this website Equifax has provided valuable information for their consumers about the ways to protect themselves from identity thieves, what travelling habits can put them at risk of identity theft above all, how to protect seniors from fraud and identity theft. Once I lost my credit card and I suffered a lot as I did not have enough idea about what to do in this situation. So, information on what to do if credit or debit card is lost-this was very useful for me.

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Learn what you can do to better protect your information and what you should be considering when it comes to identity theft.

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Identity Theft can happen in many different forms. For example, from financial fraud and forgery to misuse of government programs. Even with small pieces of information like name and date of birth, the thieves can do fraud activities. A person may not even understand that he/ she is a victim of identity theft unless until he sees his credit card statement or other bills that he never applied!

I have chosen this website because it provides not only a clear idea about signs of identity theft and how to get rid of it but also the information is presented in simple language which is easy to understand. Moreover, it is a website of Canadian banker association which I think pretty much authentic and people can follow their guide lines. The most important information for me was to get the idea about what steps one can take if he/she becomes a victim of identity theft.

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Learn the signs of identify theft and how to protect yourself

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Identity theft, or the theft of personal information, can be the starting point to a range of crimes - from financial fraud and forgery to abuse of government programs.

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This video showed some real-life identity theft example where most of the victims received a phone call and they were offered to lower the interest rate on their credit card with one-time fee. The criminals pretended to be bank personnel and asked the victims to verify their personal information! This video also presented a person from Pakistan who used to involve in identity fraud activities once and who reveled some sensitive information about the criminals such as how they work and how far they can collect one’s personal information!

One information I found particularly important in this video is we all know that Equifax and TransUnion these two company offer credit monitoring service that costs between $11.95 and $29.95 a month, depending on the plan. But, to find how effective these services are, the “Marketplace” tested two services and learned that they won't necessarily prevent the risk of fraud. In reality, Credit Freezes are one easy way to protect against identity fraud but unfortunately, this service is service is not available to Canada.

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Identity theft: How criminals use a low-interest credit card scam to steal from you (Marketplace)

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In spite of knowing about phishing and spam mail, lots of people still fall for phishing scams! The reasons work behind this are social pressure, getting mail from fake banking or financial institution which seem as real bank to victim etc.

This is an excellent video about the ABCs of phishing and scam mail, why and how people become victim of it and how to deal with it. Although, it was made on American context, yet I chose it as it has provided valuable information about the most common type of identity theft.

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Why People Still Fall for Phishing Scams

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Although, the Internet is an essential communication tool, unfortunately, it's also popular among scammers and cybercriminals. To protect ourselves from email scams and identity theft, we need to understand how to identify and avoid potentially dangerous content in our inbox, including spam and phishing attempts. We can learn more about spam and phishing emails from this video.

I have chosen this video as it has showed several ways to deal with spam and phishing such as using spam filter, turning off email images from which the sender can track information etc. I did not have clear idea about phishing mail before. I came to know more about this topic after watching this video and it was most important to me.

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This is a small documentary about Identity Theft. The narrator describes here how technologies as well as our unconscious mistakes can be factors in our identities being stolen. One of the most common methods for identity thieves to steal identity is sending e-mail and asking personal information. It is surprisingly true that people are still falling victim by responding these emails and providing information. The documentary also shows some of our daily activities such as throwing papers that may contain our information in bin without shredding those or carrying important papers with us every day.

Though this video is made of American context, yet I choose it as it gives a fair idea along with role play about what identity theft really is. Whatever the country is, the hackers more or less follow similar tricks to do hacking. Hence, if there is any person like me to whom this concept is absolutely new, he/she can get a clear idea from this video. One information that seemed important to me was to find how we sometimes put ourselves in the risk of being victim of identity theft by our simple day to day activity!

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Identity Theft Documentary: An Educational Documentary

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Identity theft is when someone steals your personal information and uses it without your permission. There are several forms of identity theft, and each one can affect you in a different way. There's no absolute way to protect yourself against identity theft. But if you're diligent in learning how your information can be at risk and what fraudsters can do with it, you are welcome to my “Padlet” to find your information!

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Identity theft is when someone steals your personal information and uses it without your permission. There are several forms of identity theft, and each one can affect you in a different way. There's no absolute way to protect yourself against identity theft. But if you're diligent in learning how your information can be at risk and what fraudsters can do with it, you are welcome to my “Padlet” to find your information!