Financial scams and fraud come in many different forms. Sometimes they arrive in the form of a text message, email or phone call, and often are designed to look like they’re coming from your bank.

According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, a common type of financial fraud involves scammers posing as bank employees in order to trick their victims into disclosing their banking or personal information.

Countless Canadians have seen these fraudulent messages. Sometimes they’re as simple as a text or email that says the potential victim’s bank account has been frozen, with a link to a fake website where the user is encouraged to enter personal information to “unlock” their account. Other times these scams involve the fraudster phoning a potential victim and pretending to be a bank employee who needs their help as part of a fraud investigation.

Ultimately, the goal of many of these scams is to steal the victim’s personal or banking information to gain access to their accounts, or to get the victim to wire money or purchase gift cards and send the funds to the fraudster.

Strict rules around legitimate banking communications

While your bank does require you to disclose certain personal information to confirm your identity and provide you with services, there are strict rules governing what they can ask you to disclose, and how they’re allowed to do it.

One of the best ways to protect yourself is to learn what your bank would never do or ask you to do. Your bank would never:

  1. Call you to ask for personal information.
  2. Ask you to keep a secret or be dishonest.
  3. Threaten to cancel your services or ask to remote into your device.
  4. Try to rush you into doing something.
  5. Ask you to help with an investigation.
  6. Ask you to purchase gift cards or cryptocurrency.
  7. Ask you to transfer money as part of an investigation.
  8. Request access to your computer.

How to help protect yourself from scams

Here are some other tips to help you stay safe from fraudsters:

  • Get educated. Understand your responsibilities as an accountholder or cardholder. This information is provided by your bank. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre can also help you learn more about common fraud scams.
  • Enable two-factor authentication. Investigate the security settings of your email provider, social media platforms and banking apps, and enable two-factor authentication wherever available. This offers a higher level of security for your online profiles.
  • Stay informed. Take advantage of bank services that can help warn you of problems. For example, if you’re a TD customer, their fraud alerts service can send you text messages notifying you if suspicious activity is detected on your credit card or access card, as long as a current mobile phone number is on file.