A Suspicious Phone Call
Late last week, I received a phone call on my cell phone that came up as an “Unknown Number”. When I picked up, the woman on the other end identified herself as being a customer service representative from a store from which I made a purchase recently. There was a problem with my order, and in order to get around it, she was going to cancel and re-submit part of the order; the only catch, though, was that she needed my credit card information to verify.
At that point, the defense mechanisms in my mind kicked into play.
Telephone Scams
You see, several years ago, I’m afraid to admit, I fell victim to a telephone impersonation scam. I had always considered myself fairly well educated on credit card scams and proper protections — this was right around when “phising” emails were becoming popular, and I was repeatidly stressing to my mother the importance of being on the lookout for dangerous emails. It’s somewhat ironic, then, that I fell victim not to a phising email, but to a phising phone call.
One day I was out running errands when I received a phone call from an unknown number on my cell phone. The woman on the other end identified herself as being from my cell phone company, and informed me that my cell phone bill had not been paid in full for the month, and that service was going to be discontinued if I didn’t immediately pay the remaining balance, which I was told was something like $9 or $10. Not wanting to lose my cell phone service, I provided my credit card information. And, with that, I provided my credit card information to a scam artist.
It didn’t take me long to realize that this story was suspicious. I quickly contacted my cell phone company that told me that my bill, in fact, had been paid in full and that they had not tried to contact me recently. I then immediately called my credit card company and told them what happened. Even though less than an hour had passed, the Citibank customer service representative informed me that there were was an authorization attempt for several thousand dollars on my card. Luckily, Citibank was incredibly helpful, and quickly had canceled the pending charges and had issued me a new card number.
In hindsight, there are several things that can be learned from my stupidity:
- Upon reflection, the caller never actually identified herself as being from T-Mobile, my cell phone company; rather, she simply used generic terms like “cell phone company” at first, and then worked off any information I inadvertently supplied.
- T-Mobile isn’t going to shut down service because of $9 not paid from last month’s bill. If anything, they’d love the chance to rack up late fees.
- No company is going to demand immediate payment on the phone, and certainly isn’t going to require that it be a credit card payment.
Tips from the FBI
Impersonation scams are still a significant problem. The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains a very helpful page concerning common fraud schemes and tips to avoid them that I highly recommend scanning. Some of their tips include:
- Obtain a salesperson’s name, business identity, telephone number, street address, mailing address, and business license number before you transact business. Some con artists give out false names, telephone numbers, addresses, and business license numbers. Verify the accuracy of these items.
- Never respond to an offer you don’t understand thoroughly.
- Never give your credit card number over the telephone unless you make the call.
- Keep a list of telephone numbers to call to report the loss or theft of your wallet, credit cards, etc
The full page on Common Fraud Schemes from the FBI can be found at http://www.fbi.gov/majcases/fraud/fraudschemes.htm.
Happy Ending
Back to my original story from last week — I asked the agent whether she could provide me her name, phone number, and extension that I could call her back at. The area code matched the company’s corporate headquarters, a quick Google search returned a positive result, and when I called the main number, I received a greeting from that company. I then felt comfortable enough to complete the transaction.
It really bugs me when companies use blocked numbers on calls, particularly on calls that will require sensitive information from a customer. There is no reason why call centers can’t have the main number be displayed on the caller ID; using a blocked number simply raises unnecessary suspicions.
In reality, the information the customer service agent provided on the initial call was enough to convince me that she was legit; however, as a matter of policy, I will not give my credit card number out on a call that I do not initialize and on a call for which I do not know the identity/name/number.
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