The Financial and Consumer Affairs Authority of Saskatchewan released a notice today about yet another website that may be a scam.

Gold TradeFX was marked as an unregistered site that had been dealing with cryptocurrency exchanges, and could possibly be a scam.

The number of investor alerts that the FCAA has been putting out has been increasing with the cryptocurrency market, and the agency is hoping residents are keeping careful.

FCAA's Director of Enforcement in the Securities Division Harvey White says that the increase has been largely online.

"We've seen quite an increase in the amount of unregistered crypto trading platforms. Some of them we've found only exist on the internet or are not real people, they're fictitious companies. They're basically out to gain investor funds from Saskatchewan residents."

One way these scams propagate is by appearing in ads and enticing people who are learning about cryptocurrencies.

"Sometimes it's just people simply researching investment opportunities, cryptocurrency," said White, "A lot of people are interested in exactly what cryptocurrency is. That'll often trigger the pop-up ads on social media, and hoping to get you to click on them and read about them, and hopefully convince you to invest in them."

While people who are targeted may get some money back if the invest in the scam, White says that's likely just to get more money from them.

"The biggest problem is, what happens is normally they'll start out and maybe they'll convince somebody to invest 500 dollars, and then it'll look like that money is growing astronomically and they've got all this money. They might send them back a little bit and convince them to invest more and more."

White says it's difficult to take action against fake online companies, so the best solution is to prepare people for possible scams.

"The problem is most of them are fictitious, so our biggest thing we can rely on is just educating the public," said White, "Do your research, talk to a professional if you're being offered these products, check and see if they're registered in Saskatchewan or anywhere in Canada."

White says you can look up if a company is registered on the FCAA's website, along with other scam avoidance tips.