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Phishing Alert from WestJet


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Media Advisory - WestJet warns public of phishing email scam

 


NEWS PROVIDED BY

WESTJET, an Alberta Partnership 

Oct 04, 2019, 12:54 ET

 

CALGARY, Oct. 4, 2019 /CNW/ - WestJet today is warning the public of a new email scam using the WestJet Rewards name and brand likeness to get recipients to sign in or risk having their WestJet Rewards account deactivated.

Example of scam email (CNW Group/WESTJET, an Alberta Partnership)
Example of scam email (CNW Group/WESTJET, an Alberta Partnership)

"WestJet urges the public to be aware of unsolicited or spoofed emails from WestJet Rewards," said Richard Bartrem, WestJet's Vice-President Marketing Communications. "The scammers are using the trusted WestJet name to create alarm around account deactivation in a fraudulent attempt to steal personal information. Please do not follow the instructions. These spoofed emails are not being sent by WestJet or on behalf of WestJet and we have alerted RCMP Canadian Anti-Fraud authorities and urge anyone with concerns to do so as well."

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/media-advisory-westjet-warns-public-of-phishing-email-scam-825104364.html

An image of the scam email is attached, and the airline has highlighted typos and grammar errors, a common red flag in phishing emails.

WestJet has more information posted on its advisories page under 'scams' available online: https://www.westjet.com/en-ca/travel-info/advisories

For anyone who believes they may be a victim, please contact the WestJet call centre at 1-888-WestJet and the RCMP Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501 or visit their website http://www.antifraudcentre.ca/ for more information and to report details.

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My  daughter is a lawyer with the Dept of Justice and works at the DoJ headquarters in Ottawa.

She is getting the robo-calls at work from the guys that claim she is under investigation by the Ministry of Justice (no such thing) and if she doesn't press #1 immediately her social insurance number will be cancelled (can't be done).  She really wants to press #1 and have a chat with them. 

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Pisses me off that we are still dealing with this.

 

Look, the government could deal with this if they wanted to.  Find out who is doing it and pressure the foreign government to "fix" it.  You can't tell me that our government and their government can't find these people - find them and shut them down/throw them in jail.  Some frigging low-life scum in another country is scamming our citizens and stealing their money - FIX IT!

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Airband said:

A high level request from our government to theirs would be respected.  I'm not talking about some low-level RCMP officer calling some low-level officer in their police force.  The technology and ability to find these people is there.   Pressure the  Indian government to investigate and prosecute!  Enough already.  They don't act because they think we don't care - start embargoing/sanctioning and you'll see the problem addressing very quickly.

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12 hours ago, seeker said:

A high level request from our government to theirs would be respected.  I'm not talking about some low-level RCMP officer calling some low-level officer in their police force.  The technology and ability to find these people is there.   Pressure the  Indian government to investigate and prosecute!  Enough already.  They don't act because they think we don't care - start embargoing/sanctioning and you'll see the problem addressing very quickly.

It would only impress them if it was accompanied by a what if you don't do something about the problem.  As that is not likely, the best protection is for folks to remember that "Nothing is free, buyer beware and of course the old "A sucker is born every day"
 

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7 hours ago, Marshall said:

It would only impress them if it was accompanied by a what if you don't do something about the problem. 
 

As I said;  start embargoing/sanctioning.  We (Canada) could do it if we wanted to.

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37 minutes ago, seeker said:

As I said;  start embargoing/sanctioning.  We (Canada) could do it if we wanted to.

How about a menu of items we could embargo / sanction? Maybe we could threaten them with another visit from Justin?? 

  Other than some foods, what do we import from India that would hurt them if we embargoed those items. Here is a ranked list of countries that India trades with... Note who missing.

  • United States: US$51.6 billion (16% of total Indian exports)
  • United Arab Emirates: $29 billion (9%)
  • China: $16.4 billion (5.1%)
  • Hong Kong: $13.2 billion (4.1%)
  • Singapore: $10.4 billion (3.2%)
  • United Kingdom: $9.8 billion (3%)
  • Germany: $9 billion (2.8%)
  • Bangladesh: $8.8 billion (2.7%)
  • Netherlands: $8.7 billion (2.7%)
  • Nepal: $7.3 billion (2.3%)
  • Belgium: $6.8 billion (2.1%)
  • Vietnam: $6.7 billion (2.1%)
  • Malaysia: $6.5 billion (2%)
  • Italy: $5.5 billion (1.7%)
  • Saudi Arabia: $5.5 billion (1.7%)
  •  
  • Canada is listed as #31 http://www.worldstopexports.com/indias-top-import-partners/and on the other hand when we look at our exports they rank 9th re who buys our goods.   So any action we could take would hurt us much more than them.  
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41 minutes ago, Marshall said:

 

Yeah but you're missing the point.  Yes, we import more than we export.  The question is: would the Indian government see acting to close down the illegal activity coming from within their borders as less disruptive than a trade dispute?  I think they would if we pressed the point.

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44 minutes ago, seeker said:

Yeah but you're missing the point.  Yes, we import more than we export.  The question is: would the Indian government see acting to close down the illegal activity coming from within their borders as less disruptive than a trade dispute?  I think they would if we pressed the point.

I suspect, based on how they received our PM, that they could care less. But you may have missed that they have taken some action on our behalf.

Oct 31, 2018 - Raids in India, in co-operation with RCMP, follow CBC Marketplace story on ... Over the past two weeks, Indian police have been bursting into suspected illegal call centres, ... Police say they arrested 28 people in just one of their sweeps, ... Dozens of scam centres are believed to still be active in multiple ...
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No, I did not miss that fluff piece from Marketplace.  Check the date - Oct 2018 - and yet the calls keep coming.  I got one just last week.  My point is that the technology exists and the political will is lacking.  We could fix this problem.  By "we" I mean our government could fix this problem.  

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Just to bump up our concerns on the long list of priorities of a resource strapped developing world police force, perhaps an initial grant for the purchase of mutually beneficial telecommunications equipment from a Canadian supplier with an understaning more might be forthcoming in appreciation of the successful apprehension and prosecution of persons or groups responsible for the plague might go some distance in addressing the problem.

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1 hour ago, seeker said:

No, I did not miss that fluff piece from Marketplace.  Check the date - Oct 2018 - and yet the calls keep coming.  I got one just last week.  My point is that the technology exists and the political will is lacking.  We could fix this problem.  By "we" I mean our government could fix this problem.  

And my point remains that India could care less about our problems or any embargo / measures we could take against them.  We are a very small fish in a very large ocean.

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10 minutes ago, Marshall said:

And my point remains that India could care less about our problems or any embargo / measures we could take against them.  We are a very small fish in a very large ocean.

Well, we can disagree.  I'm fine with that.  Personally, even though we're small fry, I think the cost of doing the cleanup of the call centres would be judged to be less than the cost of the trade issues (if we pressed the point).  Of course I have nothing to back that up - just a feeling.

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1 hour ago, seeker said:

Well, we can disagree.  I'm fine with that.  Personally, even though we're small fry, I think the cost of doing the cleanup of the call centres would be judged to be less than the cost of the trade issues (if we pressed the point).  Of course I have nothing to back that up - just a feeling.

Perhaps but in the International forum, face counts more than cost.....

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Phishing emails could be coming from little Tommy in his moms basement in Kamloops for all we know..  Anyone can set it up.

The calls from India are a different matter.  If you shut them down today they will be up and running elsewhere tomorrow.  These things are also very easy to setup.

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11 hours ago, seeker said:

No, I did not miss that fluff piece from Marketplace.  Check the date - Oct 2018 - and yet the calls keep coming.  I got one just last week.  My point is that the technology exists and the political will is lacking.  We could fix this problem.  By "we" I mean our government could fix this problem.  

Do what I do when an unwanted call comes in. I play along. Just last week I ordered duct cleaning for my 35 room mansion. The address given was 24 Sussex Drive Ottawa.

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54 minutes ago, Jaydee said:

Do what I do when an unwanted call comes in. I play along. Just last week I ordered duct cleaning for my 35 room mansion. The address given was 24 Sussex Drive Ottawa.

I’m gonna use that one.

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1 hour ago, Jaydee said:

Do what I do when an unwanted call comes in. I play along. Just last week I ordered duct cleaning for my 35 room mansion. The address given was 24 Sussex Drive Ottawa.

I have a couple of strategies I use for unwanted calls

1) - if the call display shows some sort of obvious spoofed number I answer and hangup immediately which breaks the call and stops the ringing.

2) - if the call display shows a local number or some area code that might be a legitimate call I answer and say "Hello" but if a person doesn't reply within 1 or 2 seconds I immediately hangup.  The voice recognition system for the automated caller is pretty fast but still takes 4-5 seconds to recognize a person has answered, route the call to their human and for them to say something.  If you learn to recognize this delay you can avoid most robo-calls.

3) - if their system is really fast and I don't hangup fast enough I'll just keep saying; "hello", "hello!", "hello?" and stuff like; "who's there?" Pretending as if I can't hear their side of the conversation - very annoying for them and makes them think there's technical problem at their end. Then I hangup.

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I have a call list that directs any known unwanted numbers to the "This Number is out of service" message.  I never hear or see the call on my phone.

I also have my voice mail setup to require pressing 1 to leave a message.  No unwanted messages. 

Any call without a caller id is ignored.

Any call that comes from my number (yes this does happen) is redirected to "This Line has been disconnected" 

I get VERY few unwanted calls now.

 

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