TWO West Vancouver residents had close calls with fraudsters over the weekend, prompting police to issue a warning about suspicious activity online.
A woman contacted police Saturday after she received an email from her bank, warning that her accounts would be closed if she did not provide her full name, date of birth, social insurance number, email address, home address, mother's middle name and debit card number - all of which would add up to a treasure trove for identity thieves.
The woman replied with the information, but became suspicious when the sender wrote back asking for her driver's licence and MasterCard numbers as well. After she reported the strange activity to her bank, all of her accounts had to be frozen to prevent theft.
Fake emails purporting to be from banks, which can look quite convincing, are somewhat common. Banks, however, never ask their clients to send personal information via email.
A second person nearly fell victim to a scam on Sunday when her Yahoo! email account was hacked.
The would-be fraudster sent a message to every email address in the woman's contact list, saying she had been mugged and needed $1,850 to be wired to a Western Union account in Spain. The only financial havoc the hackers were able to cause was a $1-charge added to the victim's iTunes account.
The incidents should remind the public never to give personal or financial information to anyone without verifying the source, said West Vancouver Const. Lisa Schmidtke in a release.
