If you receive a text message supposedly from your bank, claiming you need to re-activate your card, beware: It’s a scam

I recently received a text message, supposedly from TD Canada Trust, saying:

“Your debit card starting with [the first four numbers of my debit card] is disabled. To re-activate your card, click below.”

The link that was provided was a fake TD link.

The purpose of the scam is to get people to reveal their bank passwords.

If you received such a text message, delete it. Do not respond to the message.

Previous posts about scams

Click here for previous posts about scams >

Among the posts in the above-noted category is the following overview, of the dynamics of scamming, and the social-engineering techniques on which it is based:

When immersed in a story we may tend to let down our guard

The broader theme is that, in all aspects of life, our task is to ensure that we distinguish closely, between rhetoric and reality.

Do your homework, before you sell your house (especially if it’s a private sale)

Another scam can happen in the event you decide to sell your house in a private sale, without first doing your homework (by which I mean doing your due diligence), as I’ve outlined at a recent post:

When you are selling your house in Long Branch, first do your homework

In the latter case, due diligence means checking – in a systematic, organized way – on what the recent going price has been for a good number (say a dozen or more) houses that are similar to the house that you are about to sell, across nearby neighbourhoods. Without such research, a person’s homework has been left undone. The consequence can be that you sell your house for up to a half-million dollars less than it is, in fact, worth in the marketplace.

Phil Gray, veteran and journalist

We owe many thanks to the Second World War veteran and journalist, the late Phil Gray, for getting me started with writing posts about scamming some years ago; he wanted to ensure that I used my website to reach out to people, to share information about the many scams, including door-to-door scams of all kinds, some directed toward senior citizens, that are out there:

I never met Phil Gray, author of Ghosts of Targets Past, in person but I much enjoyed getting to know him

The post that I wrote, several  years ago, after receiving an email message from Phil Gray has turned out to be among the widely-read posts at my website. We owe him any thanks.

Update

By way of my ongoing updates about scams, I’m pleased to note that a March 2, 2018 CBC article is entitled: “CBC hidden camera investigation captures misleading sales tactics for Bell: Door-to-door sales reps repeatedly misled potential customers on price and internet speed.”