Just an idea to avoid identity theft

bugsy10000

Apologies - just found some ideas in Anything else. Appears whenever i do a search in Firefox, it always brings up no results... just tried it in IE and found some ideas to try next time.

I had a phone call from a credit card company last night, and it occurred to me whilst I was answering the security questions - how do I know it is them, without ringing them back at my expense?

I answered the questions (DOB and address) to prove it was me, but it got me thinking on whether it would be possible for us (the customer) to have a security question for the bank employee to prove to us that it is safe for us to divulge our personal info.

I was trying to think of some of the info that the bank would be looking at whilst we would be talking to them - like recent transactions or credit limit which would only be known to ourselves or the bank.

Anybody else think this could be helpful in this age of not knowing 100% who's at the end of the telephone?

Bugsy10000

Stonk

Absolutely spot on.

Someone claiming to be "my bank" called my mother not long ago, asking for me. I haven't lived there for years, and all my banks know this. The caller wouldn't say which bank, or leave a number, and wouldn't answer questions like "what address do you have for him?". It was clearly someone phishing for details, and very primitively too. It happens.

You should definitely call them back on a published number (e.g. from their website, or the back of a card), or make sure they can answer a security question about your account. I know I haven't always adhered to this in the past myself, but following the above event, I certainly will in future.

grumbler

You are right in your concern. In this situation I always ask the other part to prove their 'identity'. Usually they undestand this and give some piece of information to prove what they are.

JonSimmonds

Ihad this in the past, I just asked if it was ok for me to instead pop into my local branch and talk face to face to someone instead od over the phone, any bank wil go for this and itcan be arranged within a couple of days