Young Canadians Regularly Targeted by Phishing Scams - Visa Canada

Thespec.com reported on 24th February, 2014 quoting a new survey report of Visa Canada stating that young Canadians who are digitally connected have become popular victim of phishing scams.

The survey report of Visa Canada reveals 92% of Canadians under 35 years of age have been targeted by phishing scams seeking bank account and social insurance numbers, passwords and card numbers.

Ecanadanow.com published a statement on 24th February, 2014 quoting Gord Jamieson, Head of Risk Services, Visa Canada as saying, "Mostly they are online on their mobile phones and very well connected".

Those behind these "phishing" scams generally send unsolicited e-mails or SMSs (text messages) to young Canadians informing them that their account shall be stopped due to some setback with their capital and require their personal details in order to correct it. These messages normally appear to have come from financial institutions, credit card firms or other businesses to look and sound legitimate.

On the contrary, scammers usually target seniors via telephone calls.

Overall, 84% of the Canadians surveyed said that they were frequently attacked by phishing scams and over two-thirds said that they don't know how to report the phishing scams.

Phishing scam often requests for password and account numbers with bad grammar and wrong spelling of words.

The study also found British Columbia as most targeted province for "phishing" scams with 89% of its inhabitants having received bogus messages and Quebec as least with 77% of its dwellers having received such messages.

The survey also revealed that (32%) had fallen victim to scams with (23%) in malicious malware, (5%) in disclosing personal information and (4%) in loss of money. However, 6% acknowledged that they had been convinced to click on fraudulent links which came with messages urging them to 'act now' and 'verify user names and passwords'.

The survey was released on Monday, 24th February, 2014 before the fraud prevention month which is March. Pollara Strategic Insights conducted an online survey of 1,007 Canadians between 13th January and 16th January, 2014 on behalf of Visa Canada for this report with the margin of error for such sample size is +/- 3% i.e. 19 times out of 20.

» SPAMfighter News - 3/7/2014