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It makes me laugh when my banks fraud department calls me and then asks me to verify myself to them by giving personal information before asking me questions. I

It makes me laugh when my banks fraud department calls me and then asks me to verify myself to them by giving personal information before asking me questions. I usually laugh at them and tell them they they are the unverified party in this phone call, not me. I always pull up the website and confirm before telling them anything.

TallGuyShort 8y ago
IMO even that's not sufficient. I've had calls claiming to be my bank that new dollar amounts and dates of 2 charges I had recently disputed. But I've been fooled once before, so I went into my local branch and spoke to the manager face to face. No one from the bank had placed a call regarding my account and there was no issue with my dispute. The phone number was not owned by the bank and after 2 voice mails they stopped trying to contact me and I never had an issue with the charge back. So there is literally no way I would ever trust an inbound phone call again.
- jerf 8y ago
  To be honest even after I had seen that the charges being described to me on the phone were indeed on my account I was still running through scenarios where this could be a fraudulent call. However, I eventually came up with the logic that somebody had already managed to put the charge on my account, and once they'd gotten that far, I couldn't think of any reason for the scammer to call me. Basically, scammers had visibly already won prior to the call, so the odds of the call being fraudulent were low.
  - TallGuyShort 8y ago
    True. On the other hand, I don't want bank employees to have never been told that cold-calling people to discuss their accounts is a bad practice.
kevin_b_er 8y ago
This is no longer a valid tactic. The phone number can, has, and will be spoofed.
techsupporter 8y ago
> I usually laugh at them and tell them they they are the unverified party in this phone call, not me. This is one of the related reasons why I finally got my ducks in a row and switched away from Chase three years ago. Their potential-fraud-has-happened outreach department was, in my experience, terrible about this. It didn't help that their potential-fraud-detection department was similarly bad. ("You used your debit card at an AM/PM in Washington State!!!!" Yes, I know, it is about 900 feet from my house; I go there regularly.) Point being, I got quite a few calls from their (real) fraud prevention department about (supposed) fraud. Each time, the rep who called me would get mad at me for not handing over the last four of my SSN and my complete address to the calling party. I pointed out, each time, that they were the ones who called me so I should be verifying them. "But, sir, WE are the bank and you could be anyone who just answered your phone." The credit union I now use just presents a message with their name and a request to call back. "We may have detected a fraudulent purchase; please give us a call at the number on the back of your card and reference case number [digits]." Fortunately, their system is much better; I've only heard this message once.
- CWuestefeld 8y ago
  their potential-fraud-detection department was similarly bad. ("You used your debit card at an AM/PM in Washington State!!!!" Yes, I know, it is about 900 feet from my house; I go there regularly.) A year ago I had an awful experience with this. We were on vacation at Big Bend National Park, which is hours away from everything in southwest Texas. When trying to pay for breakfast, our card was denied. I tried to call the card company to tell them that it was OK, but couldn't get through - there was no cell service. Outside the restaurant was a pay phone (remember them?) that I was able to use to call their 800 number. I learned then that they'd actually flagged my card as stolen, so I could no longer use it at all, and to get it turned back on I needed to receive the code they were sending by SMS and read it back to them. The thing was, we were in a dead cell area, we couldn't get the SMS. And Big Bend is mind-bogglingly huge - 1,252 of square miles of mostly desert (there's a whole mountain ranged entirely contained within the park). As far as I could tell, I didn't have enough gas to drive out of the park to get to cell service to achieve this (the park is so big that it's got its own gas station in the middle, and I'd intended to use this - but without my card, how can I?). It seemed a perfect trap, there was no way we were going to be able to get out. What eventually saved us was that the hotel manager overheard me shouting at the card people, and came out to give me a map, with the places inside the park that can get SMS text highlighted. Using that I was able to fulfill their requirement. They never were able to tell me why they flagged the card in the first place. They told me that they advise all card holders to warn them when they plan to go out of state. But I live in Texas, and I was in Texas when the charge triggered. They just shrugged that off.
wlll 8y ago
This works as long as you're not talking to the scammers who themselves made the fraudulent transactions (which would be why they knew the times, locations and amounts involved). A bit of a stretch perhaps :)
wil421 8y ago
The real pros know that and will request you call them back. Bank of America didn’t ask me to do this but I was able to verify what they said on my banking app. Nordstrom was actually one of the few places that I’ve encountered who does this. Someone stole my identity and tried to open a credit card at their store. As soon as I verified it’s wasn’t me in the store she asked me to call back immediately. She wouldn’t even give me a call back number told me to go their website and find it.
jameshart 8y ago
Had a fantastic example of this recently. I called my bank, for some reason they weren't able to connect me to the department I needed immediately, so I arranged to have them call me back when they were able to reach them. Little later, as expected, the bank call me back - same person I spoke to earlier, so I'm satisfied that it's the bank. She routes my call through to the department we needed to reach. That's where things get surreal, because that department isn't set up to have an outgoing call routed to them, so they decide they need to authenticate me. The method they choose to do that, though, is to ask me for a phone number to which they can send an authentication code. I give them the phone number I'm using - the one they called me on. They ask if I want a text or a voice call. Tempting though it would be to put them on hold while I accept the voice call with the security code, I opt for the text message. Phone buzzes, I read out the number, and they seem happy with the result. I really hope that when they asked me for a phone number they verified it against a list of known numbers associated with the account, but... it really wasn't clear in the context of the interaction.

TallGuyShort 8y ago

IMO even that's not sufficient. I've had calls claiming to be my bank that new dollar amounts and dates of 2 charges I had recently disputed. But I've been fooled once before, so I went into my local branch and spoke to the manager face to face. No one from the bank had placed a call regarding my account and there was no issue with my dispute. The phone number was not owned by the bank and after 2 voice mails they stopped trying to contact me and I never had an issue with the charge back. So there is literally no way I would ever trust an inbound phone call again.

jerf 8y ago
To be honest even after I had seen that the charges being described to me on the phone were indeed on my account I was still running through scenarios where this could be a fraudulent call. However, I eventually came up with the logic that somebody had already managed to put the charge on my account, and once they'd gotten that far, I couldn't think of any reason for the scammer to call me. Basically, scammers had visibly already won prior to the call, so the odds of the call being fraudulent were low.
- TallGuyShort 8y ago
  True. On the other hand, I don't want bank employees to have never been told that cold-calling people to discuss their accounts is a bad practice.

kevin_b_er 8y ago

This is no longer a valid tactic. The phone number can, has, and will be spoofed.

techsupporter 8y ago

> I usually laugh at them and tell them they they are the unverified party in this phone call, not me. This is one of the related reasons why I finally got my ducks in a row and switched away from Chase three years ago. Their potential-fraud-has-happened outreach department was, in my experience, terrible about this. It didn't help that their potential-fraud-detection department was similarly bad. ("You used your debit card at an AM/PM in Washington State!!!!" Yes, I know, it is about 900 feet from my house; I go there regularly.) Point being, I got quite a few calls from their (real) fraud prevention department about (supposed) fraud. Each time, the rep who called me would get mad at me for not handing over the last four of my SSN and my complete address to the calling party. I pointed out, each time, that they were the ones who called me so I should be verifying them. "But, sir, WE are the bank and you could be anyone who just answered your phone." The credit union I now use just presents a message with their name and a request to call back. "We may have detected a fraudulent purchase; please give us a call at the number on the back of your card and reference case number [digits]." Fortunately, their system is much better; I've only heard this message once.

CWuestefeld 8y ago
their potential-fraud-detection department was similarly bad. ("You used your debit card at an AM/PM in Washington State!!!!" Yes, I know, it is about 900 feet from my house; I go there regularly.) A year ago I had an awful experience with this. We were on vacation at Big Bend National Park, which is hours away from everything in southwest Texas. When trying to pay for breakfast, our card was denied. I tried to call the card company to tell them that it was OK, but couldn't get through - there was no cell service. Outside the restaurant was a pay phone (remember them?) that I was able to use to call their 800 number. I learned then that they'd actually flagged my card as stolen, so I could no longer use it at all, and to get it turned back on I needed to receive the code they were sending by SMS and read it back to them. The thing was, we were in a dead cell area, we couldn't get the SMS. And Big Bend is mind-bogglingly huge - 1,252 of square miles of mostly desert (there's a whole mountain ranged entirely contained within the park). As far as I could tell, I didn't have enough gas to drive out of the park to get to cell service to achieve this (the park is so big that it's got its own gas station in the middle, and I'd intended to use this - but without my card, how can I?). It seemed a perfect trap, there was no way we were going to be able to get out. What eventually saved us was that the hotel manager overheard me shouting at the card people, and came out to give me a map, with the places inside the park that can get SMS text highlighted. Using that I was able to fulfill their requirement. They never were able to tell me why they flagged the card in the first place. They told me that they advise all card holders to warn them when they plan to go out of state. But I live in Texas, and I was in Texas when the charge triggered. They just shrugged that off.

wlll 8y ago

This works as long as you're not talking to the scammers who themselves made the fraudulent transactions (which would be why they knew the times, locations and amounts involved). A bit of a stretch perhaps :)

wil421 8y ago

The real pros know that and will request you call them back. Bank of America didn’t ask me to do this but I was able to verify what they said on my banking app. Nordstrom was actually one of the few places that I’ve encountered who does this. Someone stole my identity and tried to open a credit card at their store. As soon as I verified it’s wasn’t me in the store she asked me to call back immediately. She wouldn’t even give me a call back number told me to go their website and find it.

jameshart 8y ago

Had a fantastic example of this recently. I called my bank, for some reason they weren't able to connect me to the department I needed immediately, so I arranged to have them call me back when they were able to reach them. Little later, as expected, the bank call me back - same person I spoke to earlier, so I'm satisfied that it's the bank. She routes my call through to the department we needed to reach. That's where things get surreal, because that department isn't set up to have an outgoing call routed to them, so they decide they need to authenticate me. The method they choose to do that, though, is to ask me for a phone number to which they can send an authentication code. I give them the phone number I'm using - the one they called me on. They ask if I want a text or a voice call. Tempting though it would be to put them on hold while I accept the voice call with the security code, I opt for the text message. Phone buzzes, I read out the number, and they seem happy with the result. I really hope that when they asked me for a phone number they verified it against a list of known numbers associated with the account, but... it really wasn't clear in the context of the interaction.