How to protect your email account from scams and fraud

How safe is your email account from hackers? Many Canadians have a false sense of security around their email use. They may not have noticed anything amiss in their email account in a long time. But, unbeknownst to them, their email may have been exposed in a corporate data breach. Or their email address, possibly combined with other personal information, may be changing hands on the dark web for years before cyber-criminals attempt to enter their account.

Why do scammers hack email accounts?

Your email account is a treasure trove of personal and financial information. Once inside it, criminals can easily determine where you bank, what credit cards you hold, where you live and what kind of emails you typically receive. They might even be able to intercept multi-factor authentication (MFA or 2FA) messages.

Anyone in Canada can be a target—you don’t need a six-figure bank account to catch a scammer’s attention. In fact, they deliberately cast a wide net.

“The jackpot is when they get someone with substantial assets, but anyone can be a target for scammers,” says Octavia Howell, vice-president and chief information security officer for Equifax Canada, which provides credit scores and reports based on the consumer data creditors and other businesses report to it.

Instead, criminals seek information on as many accounts as possible—including those of your friends, colleagues and other contacts. One scam in Canada involves creating fake co-worker email addresses (based on targets’ contacts and email threads) and asking for banking information for, say, an expense reimbursement or a paycheque. It seems an innocent enough email a colleague might send, but it spells trouble when it’s fraud.

Today’s computing power enables scammers to attack millions of accounts at a time, to cross-reference information and to try out thousands of password combinations. For a scam to pay off, Howell notes, “…they only have to be correct once.”

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Equifax Complete Protection

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Equifax Complete Protection is a credit and cybersecurity protection service designed to help Canadians spot the signs of identity fraud faster.

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• Scans for your personal data on the dark web
• Social media monitoring by industry leader ZeroFox

Subscription price: $34.95 per month

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Here are some tips for how to recognize phishing scams and more from Octavia Howell

Fortunately, there are ways to substantially reduce the risk of fraud with proper email hygiene. Here are some simple practices Howell recommends:

• Change your email passwords often, at least once every few months. If you learn that a company, non-profit or government department you deal with has been hacked, change your email password as soon as possible.
• Never click on a suspicious email. Use your email server’s tools to report and delete the message. When in doubt, check the return address to see if it matches that of the organization or person it purports to come from. But be aware that cyber-criminals increasingly use cloning tools that can make the address look like that of someone you know. Check the email address for the slightest thing that seems off, like an extra letter or a period or hyphen where one shouldn’t be.
• Download a website blocker onto your computer and phone so that if you accidentally click on a suspicious link you’ve come across previously, you are automatically blocked from clicking through.
• Get to know your digital footprint. Every now and then, Google yourself to see what baseline information is exposed. If your email address is out there, remove or change it.
• Consider subscribing to a fraud protection service to protect you and your family by identifying any suspicious behaviour early.
• Do not put your email address on social media. “Some websites ask you if you want your email to be public,” Howell says. “That gives someone the ability to know exactly where your personal information is.” In fact, avoid offering up any personal details, down to the name of your pet, on social media. These tidbits can be used to crack passwords, craft phishing emails you’re likely to respond to, and perpetrate fraud in other ways.
• Don’t use your email address as a username on other sites. Many companies still use email as a default username—change it to something else, if possible.

Scammers are using AI

A lot has been made lately of how artificial intelligence (AI) can improve corporate productivity. Well, cyber-criminals are starting to use it, too. And too well, actually.

“With access to AI, they can glean information that is publicly available on the internet,” Howell says. Scammers can pull your personal details together and use it to attempt still more sophisticated fraud. Before, hacking was about cracking numerical codes, but now it makes use of real information. For this reason, Canadians need to be ever warier online.

How to report identity theft in Canada

If you think your identity may have been stolen, report the crime to your local police and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. You should also notify the Canadian credit bureaus, including Equifax, to report the fraud. You will have an option to put a fraud alert on your credit file, so you would be alerted if someone attempts to access credit or loans in your name. Also pay attention to your credit scores and credit reports—also available from Equifax—for signs of suspicious activity.

Identify fraud early with Equifax Complete Protection

One way to raise your email security game is to subscribe to a tool such as Equifax Complete^TM Protection, which is a monthly subscription service that provides a suite of tools to help keep your personal data and devices safe online and help you monitor your credit and ID. If your identity is stolen, an Equifax identity restoration specialist will help you recover it—plus you can get up to $1 million in identity theft insurance (not available in Quebec).

Features of Equifax Complete Protection include:

• Daily credit monitoring and alerts to notify you of key changes to your Equifax credit report, such as a new credit card or loan application.
• WebScan, which monitors the dark web (hidden websites where criminals like to hang out and trade data) to see if your personal information appears there.
• Social media monitoring provided by industry leader ZeroFox, to alert you to suspicious activity on your social media accounts.
• Online data encryption by NordVPN and online password generation and storage by NordPass
• Parental controls from Bitdefender to restrict which websites and apps your kids can access
• Device protection from Bitdefender to help stop phishing attempts and protect devices from viruses and malware

Equifax Complete Protection costs $34.95 per month—a modest price to pay for peace of mind. To learn more, visit the Equifax website.

Read more about fraud prevention:

• Your ID was stolen, here’s what to expect
• 7 ways to protect yourself from ID theft
• 10 common crypto scams and how to avoid them
• Canadian seniors, watch out for these scams

About Michael McCullough

Michael is a financial writer and editor in Duncan, B.C. He’s a former managing editor of Canadian Business and editorial director of Canada Wide Media. He also writes for The Globe and Mail and BCBusiness.

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