 | | | | This is your Marketplace Watchdog for Friday, June 06, 2025.
By: Dexter McMillan
| | |  | | | The bank insists he's responsible for fraudulent charges on his credit card, yet provides no evidence
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Jordon Judge's cellphone rang as he sat in his local Vancouver coffee shop last October, caller ID said the person was from Scotiabank.
He had no idea it was actually a fraudster who had manipulated the call display, a practice known as phone call "spoofing."
The fraudster said he was calling to flag two suspicious charges that were coming through on Judge's Scotiabank Visa card. Judge said he hadn't approved those charges, and the caller said they would be blocked.
But two days later, Judge spotted two large charges on his credit card statement, totalling almost $20,000.
"Those were not my charges," he told Go Public. "So it was definitely astonishment."
It was the beginning of a long and frustrating process, during which Scotiabank continued to insist he was liable for the fraudulent charges.
Credit card fraud is a growing problem. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre doesn't track how much money people lose to it but says that over the past three years, an increasing portion of identity fraud cases have involved compromised credit cards.
Go Public asked Scotiabank several times what evidence it had to hold its customer responsible for the fraudulent charges.
Although the bank did not reply, it recently credited Judge's bank account, covering one of the outstanding payments. The other payment, made to a U.K. university, was reimbursed by the school.
Read more from CBC Go Public's Erica Johnson and Ana Komnenic.
| | |  | | | TikTok blocks #SkinnyTok due to extreme weight loss, disordered eating content
| TikTok says it has blocked search results for the hashtag "SkinnyTok" due to a high volume of content that was promoting disordered eating and unhealthy weight loss behaviours on the social media platform.
"We regularly review our safety measures to address evolving risks and have blocked search results for #skinnytok since it has become linked to unhealthy weight loss content," said a statement from TikTok emailed to CBC News Wednesday.
"We continue to restrict videos from teen accounts and provide health experts and information in TikTok Search," the statement read.
The term SkinnyTok has become widely used to describe an online subculture of influencers and content creators that promote extreme thinness.
Now, searches for SkinnyTok will yield no results except for a message that prompts users to check out expert resources. In Canada, viewers will see contact information and links for groups such as the National Eating Disorder Information Centre and Anorexie et boulimie Québec.
Read more of the story by CBC's Shaki Sutharsan.
| | |  | | | Air passenger rights group files court challenge to 'unconstitutional' rules it says muzzle travellers
| Jill Rorabeck says she wishes she'd never turned to Canada's airline regulator to settle her dispute with Swoop Airlines.
Not only did the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) side with the airline, Rorabeck can't even share the details of her dispute.
The Toronto woman submitted a complaint almost three years ago with the CTA, which acts as an adjudicator between airlines and passengers in air travel complaints. She learned in January that she lost her case, but due to legislation passed in 2023 that prevents passengers from sharing full details of CTA decisions, she's not allowed to reveal key information about what happened.
"No one can warn others about their experiences," said Rorabeck. "There is zero accountability on the part of the airlines or the CTA."
The Air Passenger Rights organization — a Halifax-based nonprofit — has now filed a constitutional challenge in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, arguing Canadians should have access to the decisions made by the CTA's quasi-judicial tribunal.
"We believe that the way the complaint process has been set up at the Canadian Transportation Agency violates fundamental rights," said Air Passenger Rights founder Gábor Lukács.
At issue is section 85.09(1) of the Canadian Transportation Act, which says once the CTA issues a decision, neither the airline nor the passenger involved is allowed to openly share the details unless both parties agree.
Since that rule was implemented, not a single case has been made fully public, which Lukács says gives airlines the strategic advantage of having access to previous rulings while passengers remain unaware of how complaints are being decided.
Read more from CBC Go Public's Erica Johnson and Ana Komnenic.
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