Village Gamer

The Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC) has issued a Consumer Alert warning all Canadians to beware of unsolicited communications that claim to be from FCAC. FCAC does not initiate contact with individual consumers and has learned of a suspicious incident involving a letter addressed to a consumer that was supposedly sent by FCAC. It appeared to be on FCAC’s letterhead. The letter contained personal and financial information which the sender claimed was from the recipient’s credit history file, and asked the recipient to verify the information. Communications that misrepresent FCAC may be scams designed to collect personal and financial information in order to commit identity theft.

Consumers can take precautions to protect their personal information:

• never providing personal information unless they have initiated the communication and trust the people or organizations they are communicating with
• keeping personal information in a secure and safe place
• never sending personal information by email
• when online, only using secure websites to transmit personal information
• checking that addresses start with “https” or have a padlock image on the address bar-this indicates that the information entered on these pages is secure
• keeping their computer antivirus software up to date
• checking their accounts and statements for any suspicious or incorrect activity regularly and reporting it immediately.

Anyone contacted in this manner is asked to report the incident to:

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre is a joint partnership between the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Competition Bureau of Canada.