The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre and RCMP want people to be extra cautious while working remotely or using social media.
The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the number of people working from home, socializing over the internet, and doing financial transactions online.
While it’s fast and easy to accomplish these tasks online, it may also expose people to identity thieves and fraudsters who are out to steal personal and financial information.
Fraudsters use this information to commit identity fraud and the anti-fraud centre is urging people to secure their personal information.
The Anti-Fraud Centre is also warning people to watch out for missing bills and other mail, suspicious activity on your bank or credit card statements, bills from unknown service providers, and phishing emails asking you to click on links or open attachments.
Other things to avoid include giving out your social insurance number as that is a key to your identity and credit reports and sharing everything through email and social networking sites.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reports that during the first 12 months of the pandemic nearly 12-thousand people lost 7.2-Million dollars to COVID-19 fraud.
The first two months of this year over 34-Million dollars has been lost to all kinds of fraud in Canada.
The total amount of money lost to all fraud in Canada last year was more than 107-Million dollars.
