Tens of thousands of Canadians fall victim to fraud every year, and since the COVID-19 pandemic began, it has gotten even worse.
One Windsor computer technician is tired of seeing it happen over and over and has done something about it.
Speaking on AM800's The Morning Drive, Kevin Cosgrove, a computer technician at PC Outfitters in Windsor, explained that he has created a booklet called ‘Digital Safety For The Non-Tech Savvy’.
"There's tons of flyers, brochures, and help. Anybody can learn this stuff, it's not that difficult. But of course all of this stuff being available already, even online if you wanted to learn, if that was sufficient people would already know this. We really went out of our way to make something different here," he explained.
In just this year alone, 43,230 Canadians have already fallen victim to a scam, with nearly $200 million lost in those fraudulent transactions.
That’s double the rate from 2020 and Cosgrove says many of those victims are seniors.
Lloyd Brown-John, the director of Elder College, has turned to Cosgrove to teach classes on computer literacy over the years.
But with scam activity at an all-time high, Cosgrove decided to put his lessons into his first ever book.
"That kind of took away some of that intimidation that a lot of people feel with the computer stuff," he continued. "To try and make it a little more approachable and accessible and crunch it down I guess into bite sized bits."
The booklet discussed subjects like phishing, malware and credential stuffing — all methods of accessing personal information of computer users — and many of them avoidable according to Cosgrove.
While initially marketed to seniors, he says anyone can be a victim, as evidenced by one of the mistakes problems folks tend to commit.
"One of the biggest things I do talk about when we do our classes or lectures or even the book, if nobody took away any of the other information and just went with the information on handling their passwords a little better. That's probably the largest self inflicted wound that people end up with."
The book is free in both paperback and digital copy, with 4,000 paperback copies available at PC Outfitters in Windsor and Elder College.
Cosgrove says it will also be digitally published on the Windsor Police website.
- with files from CTV Windsor's Rich Garton and AM800's The Morning Drive