Should I Worry About Pretexting?
Should I Worry about Pretexting?
Pretexting is when someone intentionally falsifies their own identity or lies about something in order to get information out of YOU! This is easily done over the phone by someone who has put a lot of time and effort into figuring out how to get you, or any target, to give up some really personal information that will allow them to do some harm to personal accounts.
Credit Cards and Bank Account information are perfect targets for a pretext scam and some sort of telephone survey is usually put together to withdraw information commonly used in association with accessing those accounts. To protect yourself against a pretexting fraud is not that hard as long as you really think twice about answering questions involving mother’s maiden name, first telephone number, favorite author, etc. You may recognize some of these terms from setting up your security questions for accounts, or ways to retrieve online passwords if you forget them.
There are plenty of legitimate telephone survey companies out there trying to perform good deeds and collect important information for credible pursuits but who really needs to participate with such a great risk of identity theft out there? Remember, someone involved in pretexting has gone to great lengths to perfect their scam and appear to be a legitimate representative of some company or agency that most people use. These criminals are masters of Social Engineering and know how to gather information without us realizing it is going on.
So why worry about pretexting?
The real problem associated with a pretext type of scam is that once a person has some of your personal information, they can do a pretty good job convincing a customer representative of your bank or credit card company that they are actually you and need either a new credit card issued or some type of malicious balance transfer. There is really no limit to what a good thief can steal and we all really do need to worry about pretexting.
Now there are really two points to be made here. First is that you can protect yourself from a potential scam by knowing who is on the other end of the phone. If they are calling from a cell phone, their number will probably not be associated with any familiar number or a name in your call log. Searching the number and identifying the owner of the cell phone can be done easily by using a free reverse look up or a cell reverse. Once you find out the identify of the person behind the calls you can report them to the authorities or simply let them know you caught them phishing. The later usually works and they will move on to the next target.
The second point is that Trace A Cell Number or any reputable mobile number search will not have any information in their database obtained through pretexting. Cell phone number search data and unlisted telephone numbers are accessed through legitimate records and are compiled for use legally. Anyone can pay to use these phone records sources but good reverse look up services have done all the work and have all the information needed in one place and retrieve it for an absolutely minimal cost.
