What is Pretexting and Why Do I Care?

 

Imagine having a casual conversation with someone who was simply asking you simple survey questions. Now imagine that someone cleaned out your bank account approximately twenty minutes later. You may not know it, but you just got "pretexted."

 Pretexting is the illegal practice of getting someone’s personal information under false pretenses. Pretexters then sell this information to people who may use it to get credit in the victim’s name, steal the victim’s assets, or to investigate or sue the victim.

 I’m a Pretty Smart Person…How Would They Fool *Me*?

 

Pretexters are pretty smart, too. They tend to set up wildly convincing scenarios to build your trust. For example, a pretexter may call, claim he's from a survey firm, and ask you a few seemingly innocuous questions. When the pretexter has all the information he needs, he uses it to call your financial institution. He proceeds to pretend to be you or someone else with rights to the account. He might claim that he's forgotten his checkbook and needs information about his account. He has now used simple information – name, address, what bank branch you normally use, where you last used your debit card – to gain more critical information, such as your account number, credit card number and account balances. You would be surprised by the amount of information a thoroughly convinced customer service representative can give away.

Much of your personal information isn’t really personal at all. A great deal about you is available in public records. Information such as real estate property ownership, phone number, home address, or whether you’ve filed bankruptcy is available in numerous public databases. Accessing this information is perfectly legal.

Well, How Do I Know What is Legal and What Isn’t?

By law, it’s against the law for anyone to:

• Use false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or documents to get your information from a financial institution or directly from you.

• Use forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents to get your information from a financial institution or directly from you.

• Ask another person to get someone else's customer information using false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or using false, fictitious or fraudulent documents or forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents.

• As with all identity theft issues, the best defense is to keep your eyes wide and your ear open. Be on alert for anyone asking you a series of seemingly routine personal questions.

• Know your financial institutions’ privacy policies and understand how they share your information.

• Add passwords to your credit card and bank accounts. Many institutions already do this and most others can edit the account information to add passwords. Just make sure the password is unique and not something a pretexter can figure out.

• Don’t leave personal information lying around. A locking file cabinet is a better place for your bank statements than the kitchen counter.

• Question the questioner. If someone calls you or comes to your door asking for your personal information, you have every right to ask them a series of questions, too. Do they have identification that verifies who they say they are? How long have they worked there? Who is their supervisor? Do they have time to wait until you look up their employer’s phone number in the phone book and verify that they are an actual employee? (Don’t simply call a number they give you…it could be a fake)