This past week, the RCMP came out and spoke about the recent surge of spoofing scam calls in Alberta. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), spoofing is a cybercrime technique that is when someone is disguising their identity and using a trusted resource to trick people. These types of scams are often used through emails, phone calls, or websites.
It was revealed on Monday, that these cyber criminals were appearing as the RCMP or as Canada Post. This is concerning to many as these are trusted sources around Canada.
According to officials, victims are told that they’re in some sort of trouble, and the fraudsters ask for personal information from the victims to “help them” get out of trouble.
With the rise in spoofing calls, SAIT students should also be aware of what is going on while their online. SAIT student Jius, said that “I think there are potentially a bunch more scam emails, especially what link to our school emails.”
Andrew Campbell, who is an expert in web and digital technology at SAIT says talks about what prevention methods students can take when approaching spoofing or scams “taking a moment and pausing before you click on anything, that’s how a huge percentage of all of these attacks are actually occurring and being successful, is because that’s all it takes, is a single click and now you’ve got malware of your system.”
Along with SAIT students and teachers, many other Albertan’s could be affected by these spoofing scams.
The RCMP says if you receive one of these calls, you should hang up and reach out to authorities immediately.
Written by: Evan O’Reilly
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