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Open the pages of a newspaper, go online or switch on the television, and you’re bound to hear about a scam. It feels like scams are overwhelming us. Crooks on our phones texting us, and even, alarmingly, at our doorsteps, as some Calgary seniors experienced in recent weeks during what’s commonly known as the grandparent scam.
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As a leader of a non-profit organization based in Calgary, I am shocked by this state of affairs but not despairing. This is because a vital part of the Better Business Bureau’s mission is to provide free public education on the topic of scams, and more importantly, how to detect and stop them.
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Over the course of the past year, I have met a young woman fleeced out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in an online dating/cryptocurrency scam, heard about small businesses being targeted by impersonators and a Calgary post-secondary student who nearly lost thousands of dollars in an online rental scam.
The point is everyone, all of us, can be targeted by scammers. The ultimate equal opportunists, these criminals have one central motivation: to steal your money. They will do it online, in person, on the telephone and through the mail. They target seniors, the middle-aged, students, newcomers and, yes, young working professionals. If this scares you, you have the right. Every year Canadians lose millions of dollars of their hard-earned money to these scams. Putting an exact number on this is challenging with only five per cent of scam victims making a report to the authorities.
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At this point, you might feel like throwing up your hands and accepting living in fear of scammers. This is exactly the opposite of what we at the BBB want you to do. There are some simple steps everyone can take to help protect themselves from scams and scammers. This can be summarized with some simple dos and don’ts. Do not make rash decisions around purchases, do not respond to unsolicited messages, do not share personal information online, do change passwords regularly, do use skepticism when asked to pay for a transaction using gift cards or cryptocurrency, do your research, and please, please, become knowledgeable about scams and how they operate.
On the last point, BBB is proud to launch Scam Tracker 2.0 this month. This online tool (found at BBB.org) was first created in 2015 to allow consumers to report scams happening across North America in real-time. In 2021, 1.6 million people visited Scam Tracker. To say the project has been a success is a major understatement. Through hundreds of thousands of reports, a treasure trove of data has been and is being collected about scams. The new version of the platform will make it even easier to view Scam Tracker on your mobile device, share scam information with friends and family members and report scams to BBB. And here’s the really exciting part. This information is then analyzed by BBB and widely distributed to community groups and the news media so all of us can become more knowledgeable about scams and how to stop scammers in their tracks.
In the age of scams, it may be that we all too often overlook the most potent tool we have at our disposal: knowledge. Please join with the BBB to take the time to learn how to spot and stop scams for all of our benefits and turn the age of scams into a time of action.
Mary O’Sullivan-Andersen is the president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau serving southern Alberta and east Kootenay. Twitter: @CalgaryBBB
