It never fails to amaze us why some people who seem smart enough to do legitimate work instead choose to bilk others out of money.
Stories are rampant across the province of fraudsters claiming to be from Microsoft who ultimately tried to sell a “file-cleaning” service. In one case, unlike many others victimized by computer-related scams, a woman considered herself to be tech-savvy, yet she was taken by enough of the caller’s pitch to allow him to remove a number of valuable files from her hard drive.
It’s unfortunate that computer-related fraud continues to be age-sensitive – seniors are most likely to be bilked – but people of any age can and will be targeted.
We live in an era where technology and online business are often in the grey area of entrepreneurship because they’ve developed new methods for selling goods and services.
Most are trying to find legitimate opportunities to supply what’s in demand.
Some, however, push the envelope and even go over the line – promising something for a price, but they have no intent on delivering.
Fraudsters, of course, are not new to the Internet age. We just have to look at the latest efforts the Bank of Canada has undertaken to create bills that will foil counterfeiters (for now) to be reminded that humanity has a long history of trying to deceive one another.
If you are simply wary by nature, you probably already are cautious about opening yourself up to anything that could be a fraud. Perhaps there’s a new demand for that quality, both to avoid being burned ourselves and to educate those in our lives about the pitfalls of living in an interconnected world.
—Black Press
