Scam Emails
A recent development in the world of scams—potentially as a product of artificial intelligence—has been the targeting authors, as well as campus and community radio stations in Canada. This has also likely occurred in other countries with collage, campus or community stations, like the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
These scammers are purporting to represent the station as an intermediary, or claim to a host of an author or book program on said station.
How to spot these scams and protect yourself
There are several red flags for these book and author scams.
Fake program names: They claim to be from programs with names like the “The Page Turner Show”. If you are legitimately being emailed regarding a real interview proposal, we recommend checking a station’s schedule to confirm a program is legitimately aired on that station, and even call or emailing the station to confirm as sometimes schedules can be out of date!
Illegitimate emails: Always check the email address! Scammers will often use fake emails not associated with the community radio station, ie: gmail accounts, etc. Always confirm the email comes from the same URL that the media organization uses for their website.
Their website: If a scammer does have a website not associated with the radio station, their website will have likely only been registered recently. You can look up this information using who.is. Often these websites are generated by AI, something that also occurs in Bitcoin recovery scams.
Charging a fee: These scams will inevitably pitch paid “production packages” that range anywhere from $100 to $300 pitching interview opportunities on behalf of stations like ours. No legitimate media organization will charge a fee for an interview. Point blank, we will never ask for money for an interview, as we have other legitimate ways to fund our work!
Help us report these scams: If you suspect you are being targeted by such a scam, please report it to us via our contact form and include as many of the details the email that the alleged scammer used. This can help us post a notice for our website to aid potential victims, and help us file a witness report with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
