Woodstock Police Warn About a New Fraud

Wednesday, 19 February 2020 at 09:33

Woodstock Police are warning the public about a new phone scam called the Porting Fraud.

WOODSTOCK - Woodstock Police are warning the public about a new scam called the Porting Fraud.

Porting is a service offered by phone companies that allows a customer to keep their phone number while quickly transferring their account from one provider to another. Fraudsters are taking advantage of this service by gathering personal information about their victims. They will impersonate their victims to create a new account and porting their number to the new account they created. In order to port a number, the fraudster only needs the phone number, your account number, password or the phone’s serial number. Victims are left without service to their phone, while fraudsters take advantage by gaining access to their social media accounts and credit cards.

Some victims of Porting Fraud have received text messages from phone service providers asking to confirm if they were the one requesting to port their phone number to a new account. In some cases, the victims have chosen to ignore this message because they believed the message could have been a scam.

If you receive a message from your phone or Internet service provider and you are not sure whether or not it is a scam, do not click on any links, simply call your service provider and ask them about the message you received.

If you become a victim of Porting Fraud:

- Notify your phone service provider immediately

- Change all of your passwords including social media and online banking accounts

- Report fraud to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at http://www.antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/ or call 1-888-495-8501 toll free.

To prevent Porting Fraud from happening to you:

- Do not publish personal information (ie. birthdate, phone number, answers to any security verification questions, etc.) on social media.

- Call your service provider if you are unsure whether a message you received is a scam or not.

- Do not click any links in messages requesting you update your account or passwords.

- Keep your passwords long and strong – include capital and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols. Change your passwords regularly.