Sunday February 22, 2009
Scammers put privacy on endangered list
If you receive a letter from Canada Revenue, telling you to fill in a form to qualify for an Income Tax refund, don\’t believe it.
The letter will look like authentic Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) letterhead. It will tell you that your tax return has “insufficient information.” To receive any “claims,” you must update the agency\’s records.
The form asks for your Social Insurance Number and for bank account and passport numbers. One line even instructs you to “attach your international passport.”
Yeah, right — as if I\’m going to send my passport away to anybody!
The CRA advises, “This letter is not from the CRA and Canadians should not provide their personal information to the sender.”
Anyone who scrutinizes the fake letter with a critical eye should recognize a number of flaws. The sample letter provided by the CRA website mixes type sizes. It tells you to “follow the steps below” – but lists only one step. I counted 15 grammatical and spelling errors in two pages.
One question asks, “How often do you come to Canada and when did you arrive last?” Then it offers only “Yes” and “No” options.
The real federal bureaucracy has so many feedback and approval loops that no department would allow that many mistakes through.
Unfortunately, many people will never apply that critical eye. If something appears to come from their government, or from their bank, or from a familiar retail chain, they\’ll treat it as legitimate.
Face it, folks – no con artist will warn you, “This is a scam!”
Guard your information
Every day, I get e-mails supposedly from the Royal Bank or the Bank of Montreal. I don\’t have accounts with either institution. Other e-mails advise me that my e-Bay account has lapsed, or a fictitious invoice is overdue.
Here\’s a simple rule – if you recognize neither the subject nor the sender, delete, delete, delete.
Send information only if you initiated the contact, and then only the information needed to complete the transaction.
If you contact a store to make a purchase, they will want your credit card number. If you call an insurance company to report an accident, they will want your driver\’s licence number. If you call an Income Tax office, they will want your Social Insurance Number.
But no legitimate business or government agency will ask you for information that they should already have on file – such as bank account or credit card numbers, passwords, PINs or SINs, your date of birth…
You always have the right to demand, “Why do you need this information?”
The website for Canada\’s Privacy Commissioner (www.privcom.gc.ca=\”#000000\”>) lists 25 ways you can protect yourself against identity theft. Unfortunately, it fails to acknowledge that privacy itself is imperilled.
A trail of information
Wherever you go, whatever you do, you leave a trail of information behind you. Unknown sources can collect this data, analyse it, and sell it.
Every time you use your Air Miles card, you authorize someone to gather information about your purchasing preferences, which they can then sell to someone who wants to target you as a potential customer.
Whenever you use your credit card at a restaurant or gas station, you leave traceable records of your activities and your habits. Ditto for telephone calls, bank transactions, and airline flights.
GM\’s On-Star service can electronically track wherever your car goes. Google\’s satellite imagery is sharp enough to do the same visually.
Governments and corporations amass mountains of data about their citizens and customers. Businesses routinely record telephone calls – for quality control purposes, they tell you.
Every bank, every airport, most malls and gas stations, even many a downtown street, has surveillance systems operating 24 hours a day.
Smile – you\’re on Candid Camera!
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It\’s also worth pursuing Charlene Fairchild\’s United Online site. Another site worth visiting is David Keating\’s \”SeemslikeGod\” page.
Not even your home is private any more. Super-sensitive microphones can eavesdrop through walls; infrared cameras can detect movement inside rooms. The technology may not be as sophisticated as television programs suggest – but there is literally no place other than a lead-lined coffin where you can\’t be spied on.
Bluntly put, don\’t do anything in private that you wouldn\’t want exposed in public.
This week\’s flap about Facebook accounts ignores an underlying truth – once you put something on the Internet, you cannot call it back. You can delete it from your own computer, but you can\’t delete it from all the other computers it went to.
An old adage claims that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. That\’s no longer true. Unscrupulous people can and will use your personal information to rob you, cheat you, defraud you.
Today, a thief doesn\’t have to break into your house. It\’s easier, and safer, to empty your bank account or run up your credit card balance.
Some U.S. studies estimate that as many as one in eight persons have been victimized by identity theft. If so, the figures for Canada will be similar. A globalized world ignores national boundaries. That phone call you get – usually just as you sit down for supper – is as likely to come from India or Thailand as from Canada.
Privacy is becoming an endangered species. Don\’t contribute to its extinction by sacrificing your personal information unnecessarily.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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