Truth matters
Coping in a post-truth world
Nov 08, 2025
Like all of you I get dozens of scam phone calls and emails every day. Very annoying. But, like most of you, I’m pretty good at figuring out what’s real and what’s not. Most of them are phishing for information that they can use later to go after your bank account, max out your credit cards or sell on the dark web.
But we’re not the target of these scams. They’re aimed at the handful of people who for one reason or another are vulnerable – people who aren’t careful, people who are gullible or perhaps the person who’s just had a bad day and isn’t thinking straight. Such people are generally the most financially vulnerable and least able to afford being scammed. In 2021 it was estimated that such scams raked in $50 Billion in the United States. That’s an average of about $200 for every man, woman and child in the US, but considering that most of us can recognize a scam when we see it, it means that the vulnerable ones are being taken for tens (to hundreds) of thousands of dollars. If health care bills don’t drag them into bankruptcy then the scammers will.
So what’s being done about it? Not much! Several years ago the government established a no-call list so that anybody could register their phone number to NOT be called – which created in a new list for the scammers to exploit.
The government says “Be Careful” and they offer all kinds of advice on how to avoid being scammed. Some sites will suggest reporting it to the police … but why bother. They will just tell you to install better anti virus software, change passwords, make them stronger, use 2-factor authentication, don’t give any information over the phone, etc – In other words it’s all up to us – the victims, to protect ourselves. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to go after the scammers.
And as a result of this lack of action, the scams are getting bolder and bigger – crooks stealing your entire life savings or even your house.
The CBC has run a few features on this of people who have lost hundreds of thousands and occasionally over a million. It frequently involves a bank which isn’t following their own rules – certainly not fulfilling their claims that your money is safe. They claim they follow all the rules and, of course, it’s the victim’s fault.
Some countries have laws that make banks liable for such frauds and Canada would be wise to do the same.
One very important consideration here is that the vast majority of these scams are completely illegal and the job of the police is to uphold the law. When you’re contacted by someone who says that they’re from Revenue Canada (and they’re not), that’s impersonation – which is illegal. Any lie which is tied to a financial transaction is fraud. So when the person on the other end says you’re being charged for an iphone that you’ve purchased (and you haven’t) that’s illegal. These guys are crooks and need to be prosecuted.
When the CBC looked at phone scams a couple of years ago, not surprisingly, the particular scam they traced was coming from India. With a great deal of pressure the RCMP made a complaint to the Indian authorities and some action was taken but as soon as the heat was off the scammers went back to work. Clearly the lack of enforcement or even investigation has emboldened the criminal element.
But there’s another factor that has amplified the problem in recent years. We’ve given the crooks the technological tools to reach tens of thousands of people very quickly with very little expense.
Robocalls can target millions of people quickly and cheaply and when they find that needle in the haystack the payoff makes it well worthwhile – JACKPOT !!
On the internet. spammers can send out huge numbers of emails – they can spoof the email addresses of police or government to make you believe it’s real and important. This is impersonation – it’s illegal.
On Facebook and X/twitter the reach depends on your “number” of “friends” and everybody wants more friends, don’t they.
Scams have been around probably forever, but they’re far more common now. One of the roots of these scams and one that is still with us is false advertising. It’s been with us at least since the late 1800s when scammers would sell you snake oil that they claimed would cure everything from warts to cancer.
But back then people had religion. Lying and cheating were sins … and sinners went to Hell and to churchgoers of the day (which was most people) Hell was real.
But as religion has evolved the fear of roasting in Hell has faded and the consequences of cheating are now up to secular authorities to punish the evildoers … and when they fail to do so, evil proliferates.
The advertising industry has made many efforts in order to appear to rein in false advertising. One is Advertising Standards Canada which is “the industry body committed to creating and maintaining community confidence in advertising.” Note the wording – 1) it is an industry body and 2) its function is “to maintain community confidence in advertising” So false and misleading advertising can still go on as long as it isn’t blatant and the industry itself is not threatened. Their underlying mandate from the industry is to keep a lid on it so that governments don’t intervene with stricter rules of their own.
Advertising Standards Canada administers the Canadian Code of Advertising Standards which is actually a pretty good document – the trouble is that most of it is rarely enforced. Also I should note that political and election advertising is specifically exempted. Politicians and parties are a big part of the problem. They lie their way into office and promises are only kept when convenient. Politicians should be setting an example.
I should also note here that none of this – scams, false advertising etc. is a free speech issue. Deliberate lies are never protected speech.
The government isn’t entirely absent from the false advertising issue but their presence is pretty toothless. The Competition Bureau monitors complaints about misleading advertising but the vast majority of these are from one business complaining about the advertising of another. Consumers aren’t even aware that the Competition Bureau exists let alone know how to file a complaint.
In addition, every government wants to appear to be dealing with the issue so they all have bureaucracies that are supposedly protecting consumers but there’s little representation from real consumers – far more from industry and very little action.
This permissiveness has morphed in the internet age to fake news, alternative truths, and conspiracy theories. These aren’t trying to steal your bank account but have much darker goals.
So what can we do about it?
I’m not an expert – I’m not a lawyer, I’m not an expert on phone systems or how the internet works, but I ran a newspaper for several years and I know a fair bit about advertising – it was our principal source of revenue.
We need policies which promote truthfulness and transparency and prosecute the crooks and cheaters. This is something that affects every citizen of this country and especially the most vulnerable. We need some solid policies that can shut the scammers down.
1) Robocalls need to be reined in – probably banned – unless the user is licensed for a specific limited purpose like polling. The use of a robocaller that isn’t licensed should be illegal.
2) The international nature of robocalls is a challenge that needs to be addressed. Phone systems know no borders and we need to pursue international agreements with other countries to ensure that scammers are prosecuted.
3) Facebook, X/Twitter and other social media companies need to be regulated. Their ability to amplify a message to thousands needs to be limited to perhaps 15 or 20 per day. In that way the truth can get propagated in the same time frame.
4) Advertising needs to be regulated by a proper consumer fcontrolled agency. Such an agency would have a government mandate but would operate at arms length. False and misleading advertising should not be tolerated.
5) Politicians and parties must be subject to the same rules as businesses and individuals – they need to be setting an example.
6) Commercial Lies need to be prosecuted for what they are – FRAUD!
Scams tend to get ignored by police and government because they are regarded as ‘petty’, but some of those petty crimes are pretty big. When people get away with petty crimes they move onto bigger things. We need to pursue the small crimes before they morph into more serious stuff.
