SASKATOON - Midtown Plaza in Saskatoon offered more than a shopping experience over Thanksgiving weekend. The Canada Revenue Agency set up an innovative “Spot the Scams” escape room in hopes of encouraging the public to learn, in a game-room-style activity, about scams that continue to infiltrate our text messages, phones and computers.
Guests at the Saskatoon mall encountered an eye-catching caution sign at one of the mall, next to a green and yellow cube, immediately grabbing their attention.
Inside the structure were three rooms which participants would encounter real-life scam scenarios combined with day-to-day distractions. Those who chose to take part in this interactive learning experience would have only 10 minutes to solve their challenges and ‘escape’.
The hands-on educational experience was designed to help Canadians recognize common scams that involve the Government of Canada’s name.
Joanne de Waal, Communications Manager, based out of CRA Moose Jaw, said, “We partnered with a marketing team to create this interactive educational experience, meant to be fun and informative.”
The CRA Communications Manager said they are doing what they can to protect Canadians and teach them the tools to help identify scams that may arrive in various forms either by text message, phone call or email.
De Waal also notes that $500M was reported in scams just in this year alone, and the important part of this statistic is that these are only the scams that were actually reported.
The immersive escape-style experience guides participants through different rooms where they will receive text messages, phone calls and emails and they will need to determine what communication is real and what is a scam. Participants will receive a score once the challenge is completed, and based on exiting reactions, people were surprised with their results.
The CRA decided to get creative to help people engage with their message while teaching them tools that would help them in future situations to identify scams, and to be scam smart. The travelling game-style event hopes that participants would leave from there sharing their experience and knowledge gained with family and friends, or encourage them to come and try the exercise themselves.
De Waal acknowledged that the prevalence of scams targeting Canadians is surging, and comes in various forms such as phone calls, text messages, and emails, all represented in their escape rooms.
Those that either stopped by in curiosity just to learn what the large green structure in their mall space was about, or those that took the opportunity for the hands-on experience, appreciated a handout being offered, ‘Spot the Scams’. The one-page sheet offered scam tips to help people be scam smart, noting that some scams are easy to spot, while some are not.
The rear of the structure, facing another part of the mall, offered remarkable statistics, with one stat citing that only between 5-10% of Canadians report fraud. There were several large messages outlining numbers and ways to report fraud. Learn the signs at canada.ca/be-scam-smart.
