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A southeastern Saskatchewan family that lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a stolen identity case are looking to build awareness around their story.
Andrew and Laurie Johnson had their identification, including cell phone numbers and accounts, taken. They also had multiple large cash transactions taken from their bank accounts.
Since then, the Johnsons realized they weren’t alone in these scams.
Laurie said others have reached out to them through social media, sharing their own stories of stolen identification.
“People are shaking their heads the same way we are about how this is actually taking place and to such a large degree of people,” she said.
The family will be getting all of their money back from the scams, but the increased exposure has left them in a unique position.
Through hours of research and many conversations around the technological industry, the Johnsons say their biggest concern is that these instances continue to happen.
“That’s probably been our biggest reason for pursuing (and) creating awareness around it,” Laurie said. “It continues to shock us that this isn’t more readily available information.”
She believes it all falls back on the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
According to rules on the CRTC website, the transferring of cell phone providers can take from a few hours to two business days — all people need is an account number from the previous wireless provider and some personal details to set up the new account.
“Your name, your phone number and then just one of the following three: billing address, date of birth or health card,” Laurie said. “It is easy to get that amount of information — that isn’t hacker-level type information. It’s just way, way too simple.”
The Johnsons said they do understand why it’s so easy to transfer information over to a new provider, but they don’t want it to be counter-productive and lessen security information for the account owners.
“Unfortunately, there’s some things you have to protect. We have been told that there have been some emergency meetings with the CRTC this week, and the changes are coming,” Andrew said. “Our concern is — until that change happens — what happens in the next few days? What happens in the next week?”
Until tangible changes are made, the Johnsons are urging everyone to set up a “port protected” account. They said all it takes is a call into a person’s service provider to set up the additional protection.
