By Brook Wagner, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Medicine Hat News
Posting a vacation photo or tagging your kids online may feel harmless, but a crime prevention group warns those posts can hand scammers and thieves important information about your life.
The Alberta Provincial Rural Crime Watch Association, a community program supported by the RCMP, says photos, family tags, travel check-ins and job details build a clear picture of who you are and when your home sits empty. Sharing that you are away from home is, “an open invitation to thieves,” the association wrote. Criminals often use these travel posts to know if it’s safe for them to enter your residence.
Criminals use information in several ways, the association says. Thieves use tactics like posing as a grandchild in trouble to trick seniors into sending money. They copy faces and voices with artificial intelligence to fake phone calls and videos. With AI videos becoming harder to distinguish from genuine footage, crimes using fake video have been seeing a heavy rise.
AI cloning is already costing people. In one case, more than two dozen Canadians were charged in a $21 million ‘grandparent scam’ that U.S. prosecutors say used AI to copy the voices of victims grandchildren between 2021 and 2024. The RCMP helped with the investigation.
The losses are large. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reports Canadians lost more than $704 million to fraud in 2025, and about $351 million in just the first half of this year. The centre says only five to ten per cent of fraud is ever reported, so the real total is likely substantially higher.
Medicine Hat has seen the risk up close. In January, police said thieves broke into two homes while the owners were away, one of them out of the country. In the break in at a home on Ewart Crescent, roughly $150,000 in property was stolen.
The association offered a few simple steps to change risky online behaviour. Set social media profiles to friends only. Wait until you are home to post holiday photos. Be careful tagging children. Use a different password for every account, and turn on two-factor authentication where it is offered.
Scammers are patient, they slowly collect small details until they can attempt to fool you, your bank, or your family.
With many snowbirds travelling to warmer destinations over the winter, it is important to ensure your home is secure, mail is collected and trusted neighbours are keeping an eye on the property.
Anyone who believes they have been targeted should contact their local police or RCMP and report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501. Suspicious activity in rural areas can be reported to the RCMP at 310-RCMP (7267).
