Safeguard your personal information and your debit card, and be more aggressive in hanging up on telemarketers, a group of seniors were told by two members of the Weyburn Police Service at the Vision Unlimited meeting on Wednesday.

Sgt. Marcel Roy and Const. Shane St. John jointly made a presentation on how to protect oneself from fraud and con artists, at a meeting for the peer support group for the visually impaired, which meets every second month at the Legion Towers.

One source of fraud comes through aggressive telemarketers, said Sgt. Roy, who noted that many times phone calls from these people are computer-generated, as lists of numbers are automatically dialled until they get an answer.

He recommended either learning how to say no or just hang up on telemarketers, or look into getting a phone device that emits a beep so the computer dialling the number will think it's disconnected, and the phone will be taken off that company's list.

A problem for the police, said Sgt. Roy, is that many times the call centres for telemarketers are based out of a country like India or a southern state like Georgia, and they sometimes use complicated systems making them hard to trace.

"You can tell them you want to be taken off their list, and they're supposed to follow through and do that," added Const. St. John, but noted the police themselves sometimes do telemarketing to do fundraising for such charities as Child-Find.

Asked why the police use telemarketing, Sgt. Roy said this would be their last year to do so, and said if any resident has a concern about the legitimacy of any telemarketer, they can call the police and they will know if the charity or cause is a legitimate one or not.

One rule of thumb when dealing with any caller, said Const. St. John, is to never ever give out personal financial information over the phone, especially one's social insurance number (or SIN number). Often fraud artists are trying to defraud a person of their banking information, any kind of banking information, with which they can then attempt to steal money.

Sgt. Roy cautioned also that there is a difference between those who commit fraud, and those who will outright steal from a person.

"Those doing fraud are very smooth and are very nice people, and today, the Internet is a more sophisticated way of doing fraud," he said.

Expanding on the dangers on the Internet, Const. St. John said in shared sites, such as MSN or Facebook, fraud artists often try to get people to share personal information, and added, "I never ever open e-mails from people I don't know. It goes straight to delete."

One scam that has snared a few people is a promise of a trip; the problem is, you do get the trip but you also pay the whole shot. Another recent e-mail incident saw a Weyburn person threatened; she was told to send money or she would be hurt or killed.

The police have looked into it, and Const. St. John advised, "Just delete it. There's nothing they can do."

He also had some words of advice for when using a debit card. "If you're paying with debit, watch the card all the time, and watch them when they swipe it. Make sure you can see the card at all times."

He explained sometimes a second unit is under the counter where the card gets swiped a second time, and the fraud artist gets access to both a card number and their PIN number.

In spite of these warnings, Weyburn is for the most part still a safe community in which to live, said Sgt. Roy, and the police are available to answer any questions about questionable phone call or e-mail a person might receive.