Community Articles
General News · 8th March 2024
Ester
So, who do you share info with? Do you answer questions over the phone that are related to you personally or about your home or the land you live on? Who is doing surveys for what?
I highly recommend you don't answer any personal questions. Not about your personally or about your power supply, your water or your property taxes. Not about banking, your neighbours or anything really. If you don't know the person on the other end, take down their name and number and hang up. You can call them back later once you have verified the caller. They usually sound really friendly and before you know it you are chatting away giving information that is not theirs to have.
More and more people are using Call Control which can prevent robo-calls to get through but sometimes people just go through the phone book to call around asking for information that is none of their business trying to get information out of you. So stop and think before you answer and whatever you do: don't give out any personal information. Period.
Not to the bank, not to the CRA, not to the nice person that is doing research to make Cortes better. Just hang up. If you are worried about your bank or the CRA, look up the official number and call them yourself. Remember that if you did not initiate contact, you don't know who you are communicating with.
You can find more info here: https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/seniors-guidebook-safety-and-security.
More about Call Control:
With Call Control on, when a caller phones you for the first time, they’ll be prompted to enter a number on their keypad. If they enter it successfully, the call will go through to you and they won’t be prompted again (as long as they’re one of your 25 most recent callers).
If they fail to enter the correct number, they’ll hear an automatic message that they’ve been prevented from reaching you. This screening process prevents robocalls from getting through and is simple enough for real-life callers to pass.
You can add phone numbers to your Accepted list to avoid having them screened when they try to reach you.
We highly recommend adding telephone numbers of frequent or important callers (e.g. family members, school offices, doctors’ offices, libraries, etc.), especially those that may use auto-dialling to reach you to your Accepted list, as well as anyone who doesn’t speak English or French.
If you don’t want to receive calls from certain numbers at all, you can put them on your Blocked list.
I highly recommend you don't answer any personal questions. Not about your personally or about your power supply, your water or your property taxes. Not about banking, your neighbours or anything really. If you don't know the person on the other end, take down their name and number and hang up. You can call them back later once you have verified the caller. They usually sound really friendly and before you know it you are chatting away giving information that is not theirs to have.
More and more people are using Call Control which can prevent robo-calls to get through but sometimes people just go through the phone book to call around asking for information that is none of their business trying to get information out of you. So stop and think before you answer and whatever you do: don't give out any personal information. Period.
Not to the bank, not to the CRA, not to the nice person that is doing research to make Cortes better. Just hang up. If you are worried about your bank or the CRA, look up the official number and call them yourself. Remember that if you did not initiate contact, you don't know who you are communicating with.
You can find more info here: https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/seniors-guidebook-safety-and-security.
More about Call Control:
With Call Control on, when a caller phones you for the first time, they’ll be prompted to enter a number on their keypad. If they enter it successfully, the call will go through to you and they won’t be prompted again (as long as they’re one of your 25 most recent callers).
If they fail to enter the correct number, they’ll hear an automatic message that they’ve been prevented from reaching you. This screening process prevents robocalls from getting through and is simple enough for real-life callers to pass.
You can add phone numbers to your Accepted list to avoid having them screened when they try to reach you.
We highly recommend adding telephone numbers of frequent or important callers (e.g. family members, school offices, doctors’ offices, libraries, etc.), especially those that may use auto-dialling to reach you to your Accepted list, as well as anyone who doesn’t speak English or French.
If you don’t want to receive calls from certain numbers at all, you can put them on your Blocked list.