For your safety

Note: Optimum Group is an international financial group active in property and casualty insurance (Canada), life reinsurance (Canada and U.S.), life insurance (France and U.S.), actuarial consulting (Canada) and financial products and services (Canada and France).

Avoid fraud: How to protect yourself

OPTIMUM® is deeply concerned about the fraudulent use of our name and logo by unethical individuals and who deliberately abuse the trust of consumers worldwide. Following are details on how some frauds are perpetrated – and how to help protect both OPTIMUM® and yourself from the potentially serious consequences.

Fraudulent offers

Impostors could be using OPTIMUM®’s name – and our hard-earned credibility – to solicit members of the public via Internet sites, e-mails, letters and phone calls.

We wish to alert the public in an effort to ensure that innocent victims are not lured into providing their personal contact details or paying for fraudulent transactions.

Please be advised that Internet sites, newspaper ads, e-mails and phone calls offering products or services on behalf of OPTIMUM® are fabricated and fraudulent. Only OPTIMUM®, its subsidiaries and its contracted brokers are authorized to send communications or make contractual proposals in OPTIMUM®’s name.

Beware of ‘phishing’

With heightened media attention regarding frauds, many consumers are concerned about the privacy and integrity of their personal data or the legitimacy of some companies.

Phishing is a type of fraud in which e-mail messages, instant messages and Internet sites are used to deceive individuals into providing confidential, personal information or contractually committing.

Phishing e-mails and letters generally appear to be sent from legitimate organizations, asking users to either reply or link to an Internet page to take advantage of some kind of promotional offer. Sometimes, those correspondences contain an organizational logo and even a physical address, but the Internet address, or URL, does not match that of the legitimate organization.

Don’t get ‘hooked’

Among the data typically requested by phishers are the user’s name and address; Social Insurance Number; account numbers and passwords; and bank account and credit card information — sometimes even the account holder’s mother’s maiden name or other private information used for security purposes.

Here are some measures you can take to avoid getting ‘hooked’ by a phishing scheme:

• Be alert to any unexpected e-mail, instant message, voicemail or fax that claims to be from a bank, credit card company, online service, corporation or charitable organization with which you have an account or membership;
• If you do receive such a message, call the appropriate customer service number of the existing company (but not any number provided in the message) and verify whether it is legitimate;
• Do not respond to any e-mail, phone or fax instructions that prompt you to divulge your personal information  or sign contracts;
• Do not click on any links in a suspicious e-mail; clicking on such a link may cause the download of key-logging or “spyware” programmes onto your computer;
• Regularly log on to your online banking, credit card or other accounts and reconcile your statement balances to ensure that all transactions are legitimate;
• Use up-to-date anti-virus software – including spam filters and even ‘anti-phishing’ programmes, which are available to help screen out potential phishers on Internet sites and e-mails;
• Never send money or checks to another address than those published on the Internet site of the legitimate companies.