Scams Scams and Evermore Scams
This mornings snail mail contained a large brown envelope. And that was it. One large envelope from one of the banks I deal with.
I sliced open the envelope with a letter opener. An instrument rarely used in 2026! Mainly because rarely does the post person aboard her or his electric vehicle deposit mail in my letter box.
I thought this communication might be relating to investment information. How wrong could I be.
Out popped a booklet titled "The Little Book of Scams". "How to spot and avoid scams". Thirty three pages long, and providing a synopsis of more scams than I knew existed.
My friends, this is how far our world has sunk in a relatively short time thanks to the wonders of the internet!
Never during my lifetime has my bank previously sent me a booklet warning me of a multitude of scary criminal activities specifically designed to catch me offguard to steal my financial assets!
Not to be outdone, in the inbox of my email, was another scary communication. This time a document from a government organisation titled "New Scam Alert"! "Criminals gaining control of your mobile phone by taking over your email system", etc, etc.
Of course, as we all know only too well, this is not new. The crims have been super active for years now and surging ahead with great and frightening illegal vigour.
If the best our government, banks, police, etc, can do is to continue to place the onus on you and me to watch our P's and Q's instead of them PREVENTING this ever growing avalanche of scams then we are LOST!
Maybe the safest approach will be for me to cease my online banking and payments and eliminate doing ANY financial transactions online.
H'mmm hang about! That's not so simple at this late date, is it? The banks convinced us to do our biz online. Created the perfect storm for crims to attack our online assets, then substantially shut up shop!
It's a huge concern! You be extra careful out there!
Cheers Ross
It's becoming a fact of life Ross. Before the internet this sort of thing was done with newspaper ads and ads on the backs of comics and magazines. They were expensive and would only be continued if they were making a profit. Now they can be produced and distributed electronically for pennies and even for free. They only need one success in a thousand to show a profit. Isn't it interesting that the booklet you received is 33 pages and our Canadian Senior Scam Protection Guide is 33 pages? It would be interesting to know how similar the scams are between our two countries.
You’re absolutely right it really does feel like scams are everywhere these days. That booklet alone says a lot about how much things have changed. It’s frustrating too, because while we’re constantly being warned to stay alert, it can feel like the responsibility is mostly on us instead of stronger systems being put in place to stop these criminals in the first place.
I concur with your comments completely. Institutions such as governments and banks encourage us to do ever more transactions online, which cause the criminals to evolve increasingly devious scams to steal our assets.
Then our governments and banks send us innocuous little booklets, and emails, listing the scams which they apparently cannot stop.
Where do we go from here is the billion dollar question?