For my non-Aussie friends, the ATO = Australian Taxation Office.

  • WashedOver@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    The various scam phone calls that threaten jail time due to unpaid tax bills from the IRS (US) and CRA (Canada) is still thing.

    It’s humorous when the Chinese/Indian call centers where they originate from mix up the countries when threatening people with the RCMP is coming to arrest an American or the IRS is coming for a Canadian.

    However we are expecting these boomers that copy and paste status updates limiting Facebook rights use of their account photos and info at midnight over and over again to navigate these scams on their own.

    To be fair much of the customer support for large companies have been offloaded to India and the Philippines so that’s one less barrier to overcome in triggering the BS detector of the not so savvy among us.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Whenever I get these calls I do my best at keeping them on the line for as long as possible.

      One thing that REALLY bothers me about these scripts, is that at some point, they’ll get the “RCMP” to call you, and they’re able to spoof the number of your local police station on your caller ID.

      Whatever call-proxy service they use are BIG time complicit, and would be under jurisdiction of Canadian law enforcement. If they’re the only people Canadian law can touch, so be it, prison.

      Even just basic KYC requirements would annihilate the ability of these scam shops to operate with impunity, and we know the government knows how to pass those per industry because it took like 15 minutes and a crayon to get it done for Bitcoin.

      • Toes♀@ani.social
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        10 months ago

        Yeah I think it’s time for the government to ban unauthenticated calling and slap a million dollar penalty on any telecom that lets one through per call.