St. Albert RCMP are warning about an uptick in "sextortion" cases.
Const. MJ Burroughs spoke to the St. Albert Rotary Club on Friday, Jan. 24, about the increasing danger of sextortion and shared tips on avoiding it. Sextortion is a type of fraud where victims send intimate pictures to individuals with whom they believe they're in an online relationship.
While she didn't have specific metrics for St. Albert, Burroughs said city has seen a rise in the number of sextortion reports. Similar increases have happened across Alberta and Canada. Between December 2021 and May 2022, the Canadian Centre for Child Protection reported a 150 per cent increase in sextortion cases, Burroughs said.
Cybertip.ca receives approximately 7 sextortion reports per day, and 83 per cent of reported victims are male. Males are typically extorted for money in these types of crimes, while women are more likely to be extorted for more photo or video content. Most of these cases happen on social media, primarily Instagram and Snapchat, a platform that deletes sent photos after a certain period of time unless a screenshot is taken.
"So it's very hard for us, if we're dealing with younger individuals, sometimes we can use other avenues to try to obtain information," Burroughs said. "But it's a difficult road. Anything to do with cyber crime is definitely a harder place to investigate."
She said the RCMP regularly gives out information and does talks at schools to educate people, especially youth.
"A lot of younger people, if they are falling victim to sextortion, a lot of them don't know which way to turn. They're embarrassed, and the last thing we want is for them to self harm because of what's happened. So education is key, and knowing that they're supported so that they can come forward and report," she said, adding there can be suicide risks among some young victims.
Burroughs also spoke about identity fraud.
"I was just talking to a Rotarian before breakfast and said I just was scanning files this morning before I came here, and I saw two different fraud files, and one was an identity theft file," she said.
She highlighted how difficult it can be in the age of social and digital media to keep personal information private and protect it from potential fraudsters or hackers.
Burroughs also listed what criminals are looking to take advantage of.
"They're always looking to find your name and your date of birth," she said. "They love your Social Insurance Number, passport information, mother's maiden name."
Credit card numbers, bank account numbers, driver's licence numbers and health care cards or insurance information are all possible targets for theft, Burroughs said. She pointed out the importance of leaving passports and cards with your Social Insurance Number at home, and to never keep them on your person.
"You get issued one number only once, and if it's been used fraudulently, then it's up to you as the individual to continually check with all the different companies to make sure that your identity isn't being used," she said.
Criminals looking to steal people's identities or defraud them will go to great pains to get the information they need, from phishing scams on emails or on the phone, to checking "old computers, thumb drives, cellphones," Burroughs said.
"When you're disposing of any of those items or selling them, make sure you properly wipe them," she said, and to go to someone who can professionally wipe devices if you don't know how.
"If they're not clean, your information is still stored into the hard drive of that device or computer."
She highlighted a few common fraud schemes the RCMP sees circulating from time to time, like the Revenue Canada Scam. A victim might be contacted by someone claiming represent the CRA collecting back taxes. If the victim doesn't agree to pay, the scammer tells the victim they will be arrested by the RCMP, hoping to induce panic.
Recently, the RCMP warned of the recirculation of the Grandparent Scam, where scammers target seniors by impersonating a grandchild or family member in distress and in need of money.
Burroughs said the St. Albert RCMP regularly sees different types of fraud reports circulate through their detachment, and gave a rough estimate of one to three reports a day.
"Some of them are scams, others, maybe locally via Facebook marketplace and things like that," she said, adding that when they do see an uptick in reports or an uptick in a particular kind of scams, they will send out releases to educate the community.
She provide a list of resources like cybertip.ca or needhelpnow.ca, a site to help remove photos from the internet. She also encouraged people to report fraud when they experience it.
"We can only do our stats on people that report, and that's why we encourage everyone to report," Burroughs said. "Because then we could really see the actual number of people that are falling prey to fraud, opposed to just people reporting."
