Hypocritical security suggestions from Bank

Sooler

hollydays wrote:

Also possible but what Astaroth said is the usual reason.
Its automatic dialling.

ah yes, it is the usual reason, but disconcerting when you know it's a person and the number left on 1471 is incorrect, giving unrecognised number when you dial it.

hollydays

do you mean incorrect-dont understand how that is possible.

Sooler

the number left on 1471 was an 00800 number, appears to be international freephone number, dialing the whole 00800 xxx xxx number gave number not recognised ???

After complaining to HSBC about not knowing if the person calling really is from HSBC so can't divulge any information to them - it turned out you have to take the first 0 off to make it an 0800 xxx xxx number, it then worked.

why 00800 doesn't work I don't know

Astaroth

Sooler wrote:

but how do you know the person on the phone is from the bank?

Ultimately there is an element of trust - however with me I tend to get my password wrong 1/2 the time and so them telling me I answered incorrectly tells me it is them. What I did say in my post was that even if it isnt them the fact they only ask for a random partial amount of information means that even if it isnt the bank the odds of the information being useful for anyone is very low.

With any dealings with anyone at some point you have to decide that you are going to trust the other person you are dealing with. Even if they are from your bank there is nothing to say that the person you are dealing with arent going to do "something naughty" with your account as soon as you give them access by phoning them. I think as a whole we are becoming massively over paranoid about these types of things and the fear of being a victim is causing people more stress and damage as a whole than the risk of actually being a victim truly represents

hula-hoops

With 'scam' e-mails, as well as phone calls, it is easy to ascertain whether they have really originated within the bank or not.

For e-mails you just need to open up the full headers to see where the e-mail has really been sent from (although an e-mail asking for your complete security information and/or written with grammatical errors is usually a giveaway).

With phone calls you can always set your phone to reject withheld numbers and cold callers. That way if the bank want to speak to you they will call on an unwithheld (if there is such a word?) number which you can call back to verify. Also, you can ask the person speaking to you to give you their name and extension/desk number and call back to verify that they are who they say they are.

Takes time and costs the price of a phone call but security never did come cheap.