Buyer Beware

Imagine, if you will: you're sitting at home, minding your own business, whatever it is. The phone rings. You answer.

And you hear that you've taken part in a phone survey some time ago (a long time ago, conveniently, such as six months, so you could have forgotten all about it). The company's been so ecstatic about your answers that it wants to reward you with a gift.

HUH?

Yes, you're about to receive a, say, shower head, so, when can we deliver it? And, by the way, your spouse's got to be present for the presentation, too.

Canada has been a dream country for many around the world. Some have been suffering in their homelands, others just think of Canada as a soft touch where anything goes. Once you crossed her borders and said you're poor, downtrodden and in danger if forced urn whence you came, you were in a country of milk and honey.

Canada's kindness (or shortsightedness, according to some) has led to the birth of a new industry, a.k.a. immigration consultants. Something must have gone terribly wrong because the government is now not only campaigning against the less-than-scrupulous members of this industry, it is working on a new law that will tighten up the rules.

And in the meantime, the Windsor detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) laid charges against an immigration lawyer and her assistant for allegedly counselling individuals to misrepresent themselves to the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB).

Here are some of the tell-tale signs someone's going to trick you out of your mind.

When in doubt, check it out. If someone calls you and says they're from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), or if you get a letter that looks like it came from the tax office but you have suspicions, call their toll-free number (1-800-959-8281) immediately.

Here's some information, courtesy the agency:

• No one, including family members and spouses, can have access to your information on CRA records without your written authorization. In addition, the CRA never sells your personal information to third parties.
• The CRA will not request information of any kind from you through e-mail or by texting your cell phone.
• The CRA will not leave a message containing any of your confidential personal or tax information on your voice mail.
• Benefit payments are always issued on specific dates, and the CRA will not send you information about your benefits or payments by e-mail. More details about benefits can be found at www.cra.gc.ca/benefits.
• Sign up for direct deposit and be assured that your payments will reach you no matter what. Get information at www.cra.gc.ca/directdeposit.
• Sign up for the agency's other secure electronic services, where you can access your tax file and much more. Besides, here's the list of services CRA offers online.
• If you think you've been a victim of fraud or any type of tax or benefit scam, call the agency, toll-free, at 1-800-959-8281. Also, notify your bank and the local police forthwith.

For more information, go to www.cra.gc.ca/fraudpreventionor call the agency at 1-800-959-8281.

Also:Tax time's upon us, and so are tax-fraud schemes

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Why is it that scammers use the same kind of hoaxes again and again and again? Perhaps it's because so many people keep falling for them again and again and again.

Here's the newest one: people all over the world have been getting e-mail messages recently that said they were coming from a United Kingdom-based internet and telecommunications company TalkTalk. The messages claimed that the recipient's TalkTalk service will be cancelled unless account details are verified.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, right?

No. It seems way too many people did as they were told, bringing the issue to the attention of the Hoax Slayer investigators.

Here's what they found:

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Would you believe it? If you tell Costco what you think of it, the warehouse giant will give you a gift card worth anywhere between $100 and $1,000.

At least, that's what a would-be Costco posting on Facebook says, and if it's on Facebook, it's got to be right. Right? RIGHT?

Wrong.

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Did you know that Facebook's 840 million members' data is freely available to all and sundry, so long as they pay for the information? Just check your Facebook profile, yes, the thing that you've filled out yourself: if THAT, in and of itself, isn't a valuable set of data, and if you don't recognize it as such, you have a problem.

Did you know that Google has introduced a new privacy policy that, as of March 1, 2012, allows the corporation, originally just a better search engine, to share everything that it knows about you, with all and sundry who pay for the information? Again, in return for access to all kinds of services Google offers, you have created your own profile. Besides, being a search engine, Google can track every activity you perform while online, from browsing habits to shopping habits, and much more.

Now, Facebook and Google aren't the only culprits here. But theyre the best-known culprits, and that should count for something. If their extracurricular meant only that you would be getting offers and coupons and whatnot aimed at you, based on your shopping habits and personal circumstances, that would be one thing. Becoming targets to online fraudsters is quite another. And that's what these (and similar) brazenly open breaches of privacy lead to.

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These offers usually come early in a year. It's logical: having tried to make everybody's Christmas, many of us overextend ourselves and are close to fainting when it comes to opening our credit card statements.

And that's when we see ads and commercials saying this or that company will help us become debt-free in no time, give or take a couple of minutes. Some go so far as to suggest they perform impossible tasks within three business days, miracles within a week.

So, here's the deal: more often than not it's perfect rubbish, and there are some easy ways how to figure it out.

"Debt reduction," "debt settlement," "debt relief" or "debt negotiation," fancy names, all of them.

Here's the spiel: we can work out a deal with your creditors, they'll tell you, that will allow you to pay back just a fraction of the money you owe.

Ouch!

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Long gone are the days where peppercorns were exchanged as a show of good faith and good will when something was agreed upon between two people. As a matter of survival, we asked Ontario lawyer, Paul Willis to break down a few contract law basics and provide a some tips to help us get by in a world where such paperwork seems to pop up, no matter which way you turn.

As we mentioned in an earlier article, How to Break a Sales Contract (in Ontario), contract law is provincial – each province has its own legislation and rules.

To sign a contract, the person signing must be competent – a three year old or someone with mental capacity issues cannot legally enter into a contractual agreement.

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Whether they impact you personally, or whether you need to review contracts on occasion as part of your job (if so, hopefully your employer has deep enough pockets to retain lawyers to provide such services from time to time), everyone at some point in time or another will have contracts put before them, with the expectation that they'll sign on the dotted line.

When we first moved into our house, I was amazed at how many people would come up to our door trying to sell us something – they were more ubiquitous than telemarketers. Each of them had a contract in hand and a pitch on their lips that was pretty compelling, more often than not.

Negative option business practices are a trick that can bilk hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions, out of their savings.

The principle is simple: you get something from a company, whether you asked for it or not, and if you don't say loud enough that you didn't want the product, you're out of luck (and money).

An Alberta-based entrepreneur has been doing just that, using the Internet to trick gullible would-be consumers to share their banking information with him, and making almost half a billion dollars in the process between 2007 and now.

Now, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has put a stop to it and made Jesse Willms, 24, of Sherwood Park, pay for it.

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