CRA TELEPHONE SCAM

Short Version: Tell the caller you don't do any business over the phone and to please send you a letter.

Be advised that individuals have received CRA phone/voice mail scam on their home phone.

The following fraud protection guide is an outtake from the CRA website.

Taxpayers should be vigilant when they receive, either by telephone, mail, text message or email, a fraudulent communication that claims to be from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) requesting personal information such as a social insurance number, credit card number, bank account number, or passport number.

These scams may insist that this personal information is needed so that the taxpayer can receive a refund or a benefit payment. Cases of fraudulent communication could also involve threatening or coercive language to scare individuals into paying fictitious debt to the CRA. Other communications urge taxpayers to visit a fake CRA website where the taxpayer is then asked to verify their identity by entering personal information. These are scams and taxpayers should never respond to these fraudulent communications or click on any of the links provided.

You can view some samples of the telephone scams at the CRA website http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/scrty/frdprvntn/frdlnttlphn-eng.html

To identify communications not from the CRA, be aware of these guidelines.

If you receive a call saying you owe money to the CRA, you can call CRA or check My Account to be sure.

If you have signed up for online mail (available through My Account, My Business Account, and Represent a Client), the CRA will do the following:

send a registration confirmation email to the address you provided for online mail service for an individual or a business; and

send an email to the address you provided to notify you when new online mail is available to view in the CRA's secure online services portal.

The CRA will not do the following:

send email with a link and ask you to divulge personal or financial information;

ask for personal information of any kind by email or text message;

request payments by prepaid credit cards;

give taxpayer information to another person, unless formal authorization is provided by the taxpayer;

leave personal information on an answering machine.

Exception

If you call the CRA to request a form or a link for specific information, a CRA agent will forward the information you are requesting to your email during the telephone call. This is the only circumstance in which the CRA will send an email containing links.

For more information from the CRA on how to protect yourself visit: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/scrty/frdprvntn/menu-eng.html

Recommendation

If you are suspicious or can tell from the subject line that the email isn't legitimate, the safest approach is to delete it without opening it (highlight the email, hold down the shift key and press delete). If you do not realize until opening that the email is suspicious, then take the following safeguards:

Do not click on any links in unexpected e-mails;

Do not reply, cc or forward suspicious e-mail;

Do not use it to open up a web page, which could also be fraudulent, designed to lure you into divulging your password or other information and could infect your computer without any other interaction required other than loading the web page;

Do not input any personal information in an online form linked from a suspicious email;

Do not download anything from the email and do not open any files attached to it, even if they look genuine.