After seeing a fourfold increase in phone and email scams in recent weeks, Telus issued a public service announcement encouraging its customers to “just hang up when scammers call”.
The common thread in each scam, the announcement said, is that fraud artists try to trick customers out of personal information – such as addresses, birthdates, account numbers, passwords and credit card numbers, by posing as a legitimate caller.
Providing that kind of information could lead to identity theft or other fraud, and Telus suggested hanging up when scammers call. Legitimate telemarketers always know your name and always provide a number to call them back, the announcement continued.
Common scams making the rounds are fraudulent email to telus.net email customers, credit card limit increase phone scam, illegal vehicle warranty offers, the 809 area code scam, and the 90# scam which enables fraudsters to charge overseas calls to customers’ phone numbers.
Telus said that it has received reports of these scams from wireless phone, home phone, business phone, and Internet customers across the country, though believes most of the fraudulent calls are coming from outside of Canada.
