Your accounts were
hacked. Move fast,
in this order.

Contain it before you report it.

Reporting matters — but first you stop the bleeding. In order:

• 01Take back your email first. It's the master key — every "reset password" link goes there. Change the password, sign out all devices, turn on two-factor authentication.
• 02Freeze the money. Call your bank and card issuers, report the fraud, and have them flag or lock every account and card.
• 03Lock down the rest. Change passwords on anything that shares a login or password with the breached account — banking, CRA, My Service Canada — and enable 2FA everywhere it's offered.
• 04If your phone went dead (SIM swap), call your carrier immediately — your number may have been ported to the attacker's device.

Report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) is the national clearing house for fraud and identity theft. Reporting creates a formal record, helps law enforcement, and is a reference you'll cite to banks and bureaus.

Set fraud alerts at BOTH credit bureaus.

A fraud alert tells lenders to verify your identity before opening new credit in your name. Canada has two bureaus, they operate independently, and an alert at one does not carry to the other — so you must contact both. It's free.

A note on credit freezes: unlike fraud alerts, a true freeze isn't available across most of Canada yet — it currently exists in Quebec, with Ontario adding it in July 2026. For now, fraud alerts plus active monitoring are your national tools.

File a police report — you'll need the number.

Report the theft to your local police. Many banks and credit bureaus require a police report number before they'll reverse fraudulent charges or remove accounts that aren't yours. If your SIN or taxes were involved, also contact the CRA and Service Canada.

Build the evidence file.

Every institution will ask the same questions, so answer them once, well. Keep a single running file: dates and times, screenshots, reference numbers from every call, and a list of every account touched. The person who recovers fastest isn't the most tech-savvy — it's the most organized.

This article is the map.
The manual is the toolkit.

We turned the whole recovery into one field manual — the first-sixty-minutes containment sequence and the long week after. Bank and card fraud, crypto theft, identity theft, account takeover, ransomware, and SIM swaps — one calm sequence, plus the notification letters and the evidence-file tracker the bank, the police, and the bureaus will all ask for.