At least once a day, Digvijay Kosamia glances at his vibrating cell phone to check the last text message he received, only to find a “frustrating” message from an unknown number.

Sometimes it's a notification supposedly from Canada Post about a package that Kosamia didn't order.

Other times, the message informs him that a major bank has frozen his card, along with the first four digits of the account in question. All he has to do to unlock the card is follow a mysterious URL.

“I don’t think I fell for it,” said the Vancouverite, who considers himself quite tech-savvy.

“But I worry about my wife and my children. I'm sure they did.

Kosamia's experience — he estimates he sometimes receives as many as 15 or 20 spam messages a week — is far from unique in Canada. Many say they are increasingly inundated with spam and fraudulent SMS messages.

Organizations responsible for monitoring spam attempts and enforcing laws against them say the numbers back up this common perception. In particular, messages involving phishing (an attack in which a scammer attempts to trick the recipient into clicking on a malicious link, downloading malware, or sharing sensitive information) are on the rise.

“The calls may have decreased,” Kosamia said.

“But spam has increased.”

A multi-million dollar problem

Last year, 5,395 text messages were reported to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, a national police service that collects intelligence on fraud across Canada and helps local police enforce and prevent it.

Nearly $24 million was lost to fraud where a text message was the initial method of contact last year, anti-fraud center spokesman Jeff Horncastle said, noting that it was an increase compared to 2022.

But those numbers are likely “just a drop in the ocean,” since the center estimates that only 5 to 10 percent of fraud victims report incidents.

“Honestly, from what we're seeing, it's everyone that's a target and a lot of it has to do with automation,” Horncastle said.

Canada's telecommunications regulator, which enforces anti-spam legislation, is also seeing more scams involving text messages.

In the six months to March 31 this year, the National Spam Reporting Center received 4,705 complaints via its online form. About a fifth of complaints involved text messages.

According to the CRTC, about 45 percent of these text reports were phishing messages and 13 percent were other scams.

The increase in reports is due in part to the prevalence of job scams, which start with text messages with promises of good pay for a few hours of work a week.

These threats often evolve into more serious threats, Horncastle said. He described a common scenario in which victims, after earning some money, are eventually asked to invest some of their own funds to curry favor with the employer. The CRTC noted that recipients may also unknowingly become a “mule,” that is, someone who transfers illegally acquired money or property on behalf of a scammer.

In addition to the role that artificial intelligence plays in making spam messages more personal, Horncastle said victims often fall for these schemes because the initial message is accompanied by the logo of a major organization whose sender claims to belong.

“We're seeing… Service Ontario, the CRA logo, the Canada.ca logo appearing on text messages to make them more credible,” he said.

“If they claim to be a specific financial institution, they will include the first four digits of the customer card number. Many victims do not realize that these first four to six digits are all the same for a specific financial institution.

Protective techniques

Those who receive an unexpected text message claiming to be from their bank, law enforcement or government agency should never provide personal information in a response, according to the Canadian Telecommunications Association, which represents carriers and manufacturers in the sector.

Instead, he recommends calling the relevant institution using the contact information on its website to determine if the message is legitimate.

The association also encourages anyone receiving an SMS that they believe to be fraudulent to forward it to 7726 (SPAM), which will alert their mobile operator to open an investigation into the message itself.

“Wireless service providers continue to invest in developing and deploying measures to reduce unwanted text messages, such as the use of scanning and filtering software, while ensuring that consumers still receive text messages that are important to them,” CTA spokesperson Nick Kyonka said in a statement. statement.

“We advise consumers not to click on links in text messages that appear suspicious, including messages from someone you do not know or did not expect.”

Pierre-Luc Denis, director of e-commerce enforcement at the CRTC, said the regulator is working with telecommunications companies to allow them to block certain types of traffic deemed detrimental to customer security as they become available. emergence.

This is an example of how the CRTC is trying to be proactive as text message scams evolve. But Denis said scammers always try to stay one step ahead, adjusting their plans based on what works and what doesn't, or in response to law enforcement and regulators taking the lead. wind.

“Bad actors are finding new ways to try to achieve their goals, so to speak,” he said.

“The technical landscape is changing extremely quickly, and once a specific technique is overused or has been addressed… you will see a shift to another type of scam.”

Denis described the rise in such incidents as “an international trend,” noting that the CRTC consults with its counterparts in other countries to stay abreast of emerging scams that could end up in Canada.

“It’s a global problem,” he said.