CALGARY (660 NEWS) — The Calgary Police Service is issuing a call of vigilance after Calgarians reported receiving phishing emails in the last few weeks.
Authorities say citizens have been targetted by scammers demanding money, claiming to have recorded them on adult websites doing questionable things.
The emails state if you don’t pay them, they’ll release a video of you viewing adult content to social media.
“We want to remind citizens to always protect their personal information when online, to change their passwords regularly, and to pay attention to data breaches,” explained Sgt. Ray Kelly of the CPS Cybercrime Team. “Criminals take advantage of the fact that many citizens use the same password for many of their online accounts and change these passwords infrequently. At the very least, citizens should use unique passwords for each account and passwords should be changed regularly, as well as following a data breach.”
To try to prove they’re an experienced hacker, they’ll usually send you an old password of yours that may have been leaked or breached in past data leaks.
The CPS says, in reality, the scammers never hacked into your computer and they don’t have a video of you — they’re just bluffing.
Since January, Calgarians have been scammed out of over $1.2 million through phishing emails.
Citizens can check if their email addresses and online account information have been compromised in a previous data breach through the website https://haveibeenpwned.com/.