Fraud is an endemic problem for Canadian businesses and consumers alike. Criminals are using every trick at their disposal to siphon cash from Canadian consumers and businesses alike. What kinds of payments fraud do criminals carry out, and how can we prevent it?
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, a joint venture between the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and the Competition Bureau registered more than 10,000 mass marketing fraud complaints in the first half of 2017. They cost Canadians more than $38 million. ID theft cost another $5.5 million and affected more than 16,000 Canadians, CAFC said. The Centre estimates that these statistics, reported to it directly by Canadians, represent only around five per cent of actual fraud losses.
Read more at financialpost.com
John R. Lyons says
Albert Enstein famously said, \”We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.\”
Bruce Schneier – author of Liars & Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive (Wiley & Sons, Indiana 2012) – posits a new age approach to security. I\’m not certain Canadian government policy wonks pay attention to Schneier, or to practitioners of situational fraud prevention science.
I hope Canadian federal and provincial government effort to reduce the threats posed by personation, synthetic identity fraud and scams is more than collecting consumer-centered stats and advising consumers what they can do to protect themselves. This is the fraud prevention science business of personal guardianship,
Somehow, I think not.
State governments in the U.S. force gov\’t departments, institutions and business entities to notify everyone whose information is contained in a database when security has failed (It doesn\’t fail often, but when it does it is huge). Lobbyists in Washington are trying to get a watered down federal legislation which limits notification responsibilities to only those records the company knows have been unlawfully acquired – which they often don\’t know.
The U.S. government passed Real ID,, made changes to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act of 2003 (Red Flags Rules) and to the Qualified Mortgage Rules Act placing higher standards of diligence on organizations screening applicants for access to accounts, lines of credit and other financial products (i.e. mortgages). This is the fraud prevention science business of agency guardianship.
We cannot let our governments hoodwink us with hyberbole and fluff. I\’m not aware of a Canadian government effort at the same level of intensity as the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand (other common-law countries) to raise the bar on agency guardianship.