Trying to stay ahead of the phone scammers

Is there anything more annoying? You get a phone call from what looks like an important number.  You answer it – and it’s a scam.

These so called “spoof” calls are happening more often.

“I think everyone in Saskatchewan and Canada can attest to getting one or two unwanted calls a week.  It’s a standard annoyance in today’s modern age,” said Greg Jacobs, Manager of External Communications with SaskTel.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications (CRTC) announced Monday, it expects companies providing Internet-based phone services to adopt new technology by next fall aimed at reducing the number of fake calls received by unsuspecting consumers.

The new framework known by the acronym STIR/SHAKEN (“Secure Telephony Information Revisited/Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs”) has already been adopted in parts of the U.S. and it will allow Canadians with Internet-protocol or VOIP-based phones, or mobile phones, to see whether calls they receive can be trusted.

Jacobs said the framework of STIR/SHAKEN targets “spoofed” calls.

“And that’s when a bad actor or a fraudster pretends to be a legitimate business and contacts you under that guise,” he said.

He said even if legitimate businesses all had their number and name displayed, there would still be fraudsters that would “spoof” those numbers.

The calls are not just a nuisance.  The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre has estimated Canadians have lost nearly $17 million since 2014 to scam artists who use computer programs to spoof legitimate telephone numbers, including numbers used by the Canada Revenue Agency.

Jacobs said at this point, they do not know what adopting this new framework will cost and if it will be of any extra expense to customers.

He said scammers like this are a struggle for every telephone service provider in the world.

SaskTel plans to meet the September deadline for the new framework, according to Jacobs.

– with files from the Canadian Press.