Robocall scams get more sophisticated, Canadians continue to fall for them

CALGARY (660 NEWS) – It’s estimated Canadians receive about 18 fake calls each month, and while some are easy enough to spot others are still finding victims.

There’s no official number on how much money Canadians lose to phone scams each year, but the Better Business Bureau estimates it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Why isn’t the government doing more to stop them?

Ethan Garr helped design RoboKiller, an app that stops scam calls. He says federal agencies can only do so much.

“They’ve had some success in terms of enforcement, and they continue to work on legislation to help them fight against scammers,” he says. “But the problem is, the guys on the other end are bad guys, and they don’t want to honour these laws.”

Garr says some people are more prone to falling for the scams than others.

“They’re looking for vulnerable targets, and with the CRA scam the most vulnerable targets are people who actually owe money,” he says. “If you actually owe money to the government and you get this call, you’re almost expecting it, like ‘Oh no, they’ve caught up with me,’ and you’re more likely to fall for it.”

Another one to watch out for is the one ring scam, in which your phone only rings once and scammers hope you’ll be curious enough to call back. When you call back, you risk running up big phone charges.

“You’re essentially dialing a 900 number, where you’re getting charged by the minute.”

Garr suggest screening your calls, and not to call back numbers you don’t recognize.