Security - LloydsTSB Mastercard

Legacy_user

I kept getting phone calls yesterday purporting to be from LloydsTSB fraud department, saying I should urgently phone a number they gave. The messages were automated, in a kind of American synthesised voice.

I naturally assumed this was a scam - reputable banks don't do that, and certainly don't invite you to phone a number without checking that it is genuine. Do they, ?, I thought.

Just to be sure though, I rang LloydsTSB, and it turned out the calls were from them. (No problems, it was my genuine card use)
I suggested to them that making calls like that that sounded like fakes was a highly dubious thing to do, and compromised their security by inviting people to respond to unsolicited calls.
The Lloyds man agreed with me, and said I was not the first to make that point.

So why do they do it?

The secure procedure would be to say in an ordinary voice that there was a potential fraud attempt on the card, please ring the fraud line immediately, the number is on the back of your statement.

bbfc

Banks do this.

I have been called by the HSBC Fraud Department a number of times, always on the 10th of each month when I get paid as I pay out quite a bit. I got them for a few months and then they stopped, obviously when the learnt this was normal practice for me.

The messages were left by a real voice and said I needed to call them immediately. I can't remember if they said they were from the Fraud department, but I'd rather they did not if the message was left on a home phone voicemail.