As for myself, in this case the CC I use (Tangerine) pays me a 2.0% reward, so I'm still 'Slightly' ahead.

As The Stomach Turns . . .

Dean

For me, that would be $120 annually, as I am currently getting $10/mo Auto-Pay Discount on my Rogers bill.

Keep the Auto-Pay Discount on your existing plan
As long as you keep your current plan (already receiving the Auto-Pay Discount) and stay on an eligible payment method, you’ll keep the discount. If you make changes as of July 23, 2026 (home services) or September 15, 2026 (mobile), you’ll need to update to a Rogers Bank credit card or pre-authorized debit to keep the discount.

In my area, I know most of them and overhear how they talk about the 'suckers' who give them money from their cars. It's a very lucrative scam; often netting hundreds of dollars every day. A very few are truly homeless, but the vast majority have residences.

I have seen some come out of their houses, walk to their back fence, go through and walk to the nearest corner to immediately become 'homeless'. Others, I have followed home and watched them go through their front doors. I have also watched others arrive by bus or been dropped off by car to 'work' their streets. One wheelchair-bound fraudster had a couple of friends help hoist him onto the median before perpetrating his fraudulent scheme.

Make sure one is accessing TransUnion's site when supplying info to activate the free credit monitoring:

The CEO of Canada's largest grocery retailer is apologizing to about two million shoppers for a data breach earlier this year where hackers accessed private information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdates and purchase details.

…

The company is offering two years of free credit monitoring and identity restoration services through TransUnion. Impacted shoppers have until Feb. 28, 2027 to enroll.
…

Understanding credit monitoring services

Consumers should know that credit monitoring services offer limited protection, warned Cat Coode, a Waterloo, Ont.-based privacy and data strategist.

"It only covers if someone is going to use your information in order to apply for a credit card or apply for certain government documents. It doesn't cover the spectrum of the things that you could do with that data," she told CBC News on Friday.

"The privacy issue can never be resolved … Once your data is available, it is available. ... You can change your credit card number, but you can't change your birthdate."
…

Scammers can send e-mails about a real situation that contains a link to their bogus info gathering site instead of the real signup site.

We may have a few experts in this group.

We definitely have a very wide range of awareness and preparedness.

An exchange of facts and strategies can't hurt.

My $1 ...

Three law firms in the Greater Toronto Area have been put into receivership after being accused of mishandling millions in client funds during real estate transactions – allegations that an Ontario Superior Court justice warned could be just “the tip of an iceberg.”

Justice Sean Dunphy issued an order last week appointing accounting firm Doane Grant Thornton LLP as the receiver to take control of Simran Law Professional Corp. of Brampton, Ont., and JP Mann Law Firm Professional Corp. of Mississauga.

In his ruling, Justice Dunphy said the mishandling of legal trust accounts during real estate transactions has been occurring “with distressing regularity,” and that “if left unaddressed, represents an exceptionally grave attack on the profession of law at large and the integrity of our civil legal system.”

In a separate ruling on Friday, Justice Dunphy also issued an order to put RSG Law – the firm founded by former Liberal MP Rajvinder Grewal – under the control of receiver AlixPartners Advisory Inc. The firm has been facing mounting civil lawsuits alleging it was at the centre of a series of frauds against its own clients and their lenders.

Mr. Grewal or RSG Law are named in more than 30 civil cases, many involving allegations of trust-account manipulation or mortgage fraud.

“I shall refrain from using more superlatives to describe the shocking scope of the fraud that has been laid in front of me in relation to the operation of that firm’s trust account,” Justice Dunphy wrote in Friday’s court order. The allegations of fraud have not been proven in court.

Mr. Grewal has not been suspended from working, but has agreed not to practice law while he awaits a disciplinary hearing at Ontario’s Law Society Tribunal.

A rash of similar cases where lawyers allegedly violated their client’s trust and misappropriated their money have ignited a debate in the legal profession about how to ensure clients and the public are protected.

“Lawyers themselves need to raise the bar, that’s why we’re self-regulated,” said Joseph Berljawsky, managing partner of Property Law Firm CB LLP, one of the largest real estate law firms in the country.

In his decision involving Simran Law, Justice Dunphy said there were 25 occasions since February where lawyer Simranjyot Kaur represented sellers in a real estate deal, while lawyer Jagpal Mann of JP Mann Law Firm acted for the purchasers. More than $18-million in mortgage funds from a variety of smaller lenders were paid into the lawyers’ trust accounts, intended for paying out mortgages held by some of the country’s largest banks.

Instead, the money went missing.

“This is NOT a ‘one off’ case of records having been inadequately maintained or sloppy ledger-keeping,” Justice Dunphy wrote. “Not one of the mortgages was in fact discharged with the mortgage advance proceeds. Solicitors’ undertakings to discharge the mortgages were not honoured … None of the funds have been returned or accounted for.”

The application for a receiver to be appointed was brought by the title insurer in each of the transactions, FCT Insurance Company Ltd.

FCT was also the title insurer in three civil cases where lenders sought to recover mishandled trust funds from Brampton lawyer Anil K. Sharma. In an Oct. 14 court order on those matters, Justice Dunphy issued a sharp rebuke to the Law Society of Ontario’s handling of real estate fraud by lawyers.

In Mr. Sharma’s cases, almost $5-million was allegedly misappropriated in a similar manner to other recent cases: Mortgage funds were taken into his legal trust fund, but were not remitted to the intended recipients.

In his order for Mr. Sharma’s case, Justice Dunphy wrote he was “shouting into the wind” about the seriousness of recent alleged frauds and the need for swifter action from the law society’s regulators or from any authority.

The law society hasn’t made any public announcements about professional sanctions against Mr. Sharma, Ms. Kaur or Mr. Mann. None of those lawyers responded to requests for comment.

Mr. Grewal’s lawyer, Simon Bieber of Adair Goldblatt Bieber LLP, said his client “sold his shares in RSG Law in 2023 and has not been in control of the trust account since then.”

In a statement, the law society said it had obtained a court order freezing Mr. Sharma’s trust account and could not comment on its investigations. However, the society said it “has been involved in the receivership applications and as part of the receiverships is taking steps to safeguard the solicitor-client privilege of all clients.”

Mr. Berljawsky has been pushing a series of reforms at the law society that would make trust-account abuse and mortgage fraud more difficult to commit – or at least would lead to speedier discovery.

Requiring a second professional’s signature (though not in the case of sole practitioners) for any trust-account transaction is a start, according to Mr. Berljawsky. But he said a more meaningful and pro-active step would be to make law firms send monthly reconciliation reports of their trust funds to the law society that could be checked against their bank account balances.

In his view, the current system places too much trust in lawyers to make the right decisions, effectively creating an honour system and not a regulatory one. Mr. Berljawsky is warning that lawyers could find themselves cut out of the lucrative real estate market entirely if reforms can’t restore the trust of the public and of financial institutions.

“We need to come together ... to make sure residential conveyancing is safer and better, or rightfully, we will lose our role in the process,” he said.

Dean

Dean said

⬆️ A longstanding practice in our house too.

Dean  

That is the case in our house for 95% of unidentified calls but there are exceptions as I have already posted about. It is not rocket science to differentiate most of the time.

RetirEd said
On the other hand, I have a somewhat neurotic longtime friend who has two home lines and a mobile, and never picks up a phone.

That's not me, but I can relate. 🙂

JohnnyCash said

Well, when is comes to phone calls for anyone other than close friends, I don't answer and let it go to voicemail, oddly enough, if it's important, they usually leave a message.  

⬆️ A longstanding practice in our house too.

Dean

JohnnyCash said
Well, when is comes to phone calls for anyone other than close friends, I don't answer and let it go to voicemail, oddly enough, if it's important, they usually leave a message.  

Exactly.

AltaRed said

That is not far fetched. Folks in the Kelowna area have been getting phishing calls spoofing the Kelowna RCMP Caller ID name and number.

The Telecoms need to get their technology up to snuff to prevent spoofing. It should not be impossible, especially within Canada numbers where they should be able to reach back to call 'source'.  

I inquired about this not too long ago and was told that they cannot change this to stay compatible with international systems that actually somehow make use of "spoofing" telephone numbers. So this would require an international coordination to make changes to make this a reality.

RetirEd said
I'll reiterate a procedure I use with my financial institutions when they call me.

I set up, with each FI, a note in my call center file noting a question I will ask them when they call me for some reason. I tell them the answer is in my customer notes, and they tell me, and all is groovy.  

I have seen this strategy used. It is a good one. Just needs some forethought and time to set up. With as many FIs that people here use, this could take a while.