It didn’t take long for scammers to attempt to take advantage of last Friday’s Rogers outage, which saw around 10 million people across Canada experience service disruptions.
The latest incident occurred about 14 months after Rogers’ last severe service outage, after which consumers did receive compensation from the company.
Scammers have already been sending out phishing texts, attempting to take advantage of customers awaiting compensation, according to some Ontario police services.
Police in Waterloo and Peel regions have both issued warnings on Twitter that included pictures of attempted scams.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says it has also received reports from people receiving dubious texts.
“These messages ask you to reply or click a link in order to receive a credit. This is a scam!” the agency posted
“Do not reply or click any links. If you receive a suspicious SMS, please forward it to 7726 (SPAM). Then, delete the message and block the number. If in doubt, contact the company directly by looking up their customer service information.”
To avoid confusion over whether the texts are real or fake, Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri told Global News on Monday that the company would be compensating both businesses and consumers in the coming days.
He confirmed that credits will be automatically applied to customer accounts sometime over the next month or two.
Staffieri did not say how much customers should expect to receive.
— with files from Global News’ Craig Lord