5,395 text messages were reported to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre in 2023
At least once a day, Digvijay Kosamia glances at his vibrating cellphone to check the latest text he’s received, only to find a “frustrating” message from an unknown number.Other times, the message informs him a major bank has frozen his card, complete with the first four digits of the account in question. All he has to do to unlock the card is follow a mysterious URL.
Nearly $24 million was lost to fraud where a text message was the initial method of contact last year, said anti-fraud centre spokesman Jeff Horncastle, noting that marked an increase over 2022. In the six months leading up to March 31 of this year, the national Spam Reporting Centre received 4,705 complaints through its online form. About a fifth of the complaints were about text messages.
In addition to artificial intelligence playing a role to make spam texts seem more personal, Horncastle said victims often fall for these schemes because the initial message comes with an attached logo of a prominent organization the sender claims to be from.
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