by Bob Groeneveld

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鈥淭he following is regarding an enforcement action which has been executed by the Department of Justice against your social insurance number. Ignoring this would be an intentional attempt to avoid initial appearances before the magistrate, judge, or exempt jury for a federal criminal offence. So before it goes to a federal court house where you could get arrested, kindly press 1 and speak to an officer now.鈥�

If that sounds familiar to you, you probably already know to keep your mouth shut and hang up immediately.

Either that, or you鈥檙e living in somebody else鈥檚 house now, only you don鈥檛 know it because the new owner has your name and all your numbers 鈥� unless he鈥檚 already sold it to someone else and pocketed the money.

On a positive note, the guy who bought your house from 鈥測ou鈥� without your knowledge probably got a steal of a deal.

Real estate transactions are probably the most dire results of 鈥渒indly鈥� pressing 1. You might only lose your life savings, or have one or more of your credit cards maxed.

That 鈥渒indly鈥� cracks me up, though. I love that they are so polite while they鈥檙e attempting to saw your legs off just above the knee joints. I suppose an international thief faking a message from a Canadian authority would expect nobody to believe them if they weren鈥檛 polite.

However, polite or not, the three or four calls a day I received through the course of about a week and a half 鈥� and I鈥檓 assuming I鈥檓 not the only one 鈥� weren鈥檛 coming from the Department of Justice, or any other Canadian government agency.

The DOJ is aware of them, and its website says they鈥檙e working on it. In some cases, the call display even shows up as 鈥淧olice鈥� or 鈥淪ervice Canada鈥� or something else that seems legitimate.

This particular scam is one of the biggies faced by the which is where you can report the scam, if you wish to do so 鈥� and you should, particularly if you鈥檝e passed along any information about yourself, or if there is anything in the opening phone call that suggests the scammers know more about you than they would if this were just a random robo-call.

There was a day 鈥� in my cocky youth 鈥� when I would have been tempted to reply to the call, just to toy with the scammers a bit. But I鈥檓 older and wiser now, and the scammers have grown more sophisticated.

Some of them have developed techniques by which they can take advantage of smart alecks who figure they can out-con the cons. It has been suggested that some will record your voice, and then use snippets of the recording to compromise you.

So really, if you get a call from anyone about your social insurance number, or bank accounts, or passwords 鈥� nobody legitimate cold-calls you for any of that sort of personal information 鈥� just shut up and hang up.

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In a past life, Bob Groeneveld was editor of the 91原创 Advance and the Maple Ridge Times. Now he writes when and what he feels like. He has been sharing his Odd Thoughts with readers for more than 40 years. Visit with him on .