For information on Crime Prevention tips goto BC Crime Prevention Association .

 Port McNeill RCMP

Notice to the Community

            

Unlicensed Dirt Bikes and ATVS travelling on local roads in Port McNeill are becoming a growing problem in the community. Under the Motor Vehicle Act Dirt Bikes and ATV's greater than 50 cc must be licensed for use on public roads, safety helmets are required and all rules of the road must be followed. 

 

The local RCMP would encourage anyone that has any information with respect to unlicensed ATV's or Dirt Bikes to please call CRIME STOPPERS at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or text in your information anonymously to 274637 (CRIMES). You can also report a tip through the Crime Stoppers website at: http://campbellriver.crimestoppersweb.com/.  Cash rewards are available to people who call the Crime Stoppers program and their information leads to an arrest.

Insecure Facebook pages lead to Interac e-mail money transfer scam

The British Columbia Crime Prevention Association has been advised by the RCMP of a new scam that uses Facebook pages to solicit money from friends of the pages’ owner.

In a recent case, a Langley woman failed to properly set up her pages to ensure that only those in her close circle of friends were privy to her information. As a result, someone accessed her account and assumed her identity before sending off e-mail requests for money to friends whose contact details were listed within those insecure pages. Some of the friends fell for the scam and transferred money via Interac e-mail money transfer to the fraudster and they did not question theauthorship of the e-mail because the victim’s personal information was available to the identity thief to add legitimacy to the requests.

“Account takeover is a common technique used by identity thieves in the world of bank account fraud,” says Valerie MacLean, Executive Director, BC Crime Prevention Association, “but this is a different kind of account takeover - a twist with a personal touch. The shame of it is that this type of scam is preventable by taking advantage of the privacy configuration options offered by Facebook.”

BC Crime Prevention Association provides the following tips for Facebook users:

• Go to the Privacy Overview page and carefully review the options for sharinginformation – use the Edit Settings function to set access parameters to limit your exposure to others.

• Take advantage of the “Block People” and “Limited Profile” tools to allow only selected people to view your pages.

• Do not respond to an e-mail request to transfer money to a “friend” without there being a prior telephone conversation or face-to-face meeting at which the request for money was discussed. If there is no such prior discussion, contact the requestor by phone to confirm that they have requested money.

• Beware of e-mail “spoofing” in which someone purports to be your friend by sending you a message using their e-mail address. Wikipedia defines spoofing as a term used to describe fraudulent e-mail activity in which the sender address and other parts of the email header are altered to appear as though the e-mail originated from a different source. E-mail spoofing is a technique commonly used for spam e-mail and phishing to hide the origin of an e-mail message. The consequences of responding to one of these messages include giving out personal information that could be damaging to you if it falls into the wrong hands.

• General tips on Social Networking Sites including ‘10 Steps to Safe Online Social Networking’ can be found on the RCMP website at: http://www.rcmpgrc.gc.ca/scams/student_guide_e.htm#social

• For more information about Interac e-mail money transfers, visit the Interac website at: http://www.interac.ca/consumers/