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HSBC are also (or at least were very recently) in the habit of calling customers and launching immediately into security questions without even identifying them

HSBC are also (or at least were very recently) in the habit of calling customers and launching immediately into security questions without even identifying themselves first, which is wrong for all sorts of reasons.

SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
I can confirm that First Direct (a subsidiary of HSBC) would also do this. The caller would say "I'm calling from First Direct" and then get confused when I asked for proof of this.
- SpoonMeiser 14y ago
  I like the Barclaycard (I think) fraud thing. You get called by a computer that asks you to identify yourself by picking a piece of personal information from a list. It might ask for the month and date of your birth, for example, and give you 5 options. Because there are 365 possible month + date combinations, and yours appears in the list, you know they already have this information so you're safe to confirm it, and they also get to confirm that you are (likely) who they're intending to talk to.
  - liedra 14y ago
    Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by this too! I had the birthday, an address, and something about one of my standing orders that I had to pick from. It was nice to not have to explain yourself to a real person either. You just had to confirm whether the transactions were real ones. I just have a normal Barclays account, too, nothing special.
- stuff4ben 14y ago
  That's easy to solve, if they get confused when you ask for proof, just ask them for a number you can call them back on and the reason they're calling. However, it's easy enough to type, but harder to remember to do in practice though.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
    Oh, I call them back on the number that I have in my address book. I just want them to never do it again. To anyone. It s a bad practice that serves only to condition users into giving out personal information to any random person calling up and pretending to be from a bank.

SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago

I can confirm that First Direct (a subsidiary of HSBC) would also do this. The caller would say "I'm calling from First Direct" and then get confused when I asked for proof of this.

SpoonMeiser 14y ago
I like the Barclaycard (I think) fraud thing. You get called by a computer that asks you to identify yourself by picking a piece of personal information from a list. It might ask for the month and date of your birth, for example, and give you 5 options. Because there are 365 possible month + date combinations, and yours appears in the list, you know they already have this information so you're safe to confirm it, and they also get to confirm that you are (likely) who they're intending to talk to.
- liedra 14y ago
  Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised by this too! I had the birthday, an address, and something about one of my standing orders that I had to pick from. It was nice to not have to explain yourself to a real person either. You just had to confirm whether the transactions were real ones. I just have a normal Barclays account, too, nothing special.
stuff4ben 14y ago
That's easy to solve, if they get confused when you ask for proof, just ask them for a number you can call them back on and the reason they're calling. However, it's easy enough to type, but harder to remember to do in practice though.
- SideburnsOfDoom 14y ago
  Oh, I call them back on the number that I have in my address book. I just want them to never do it again. To anyone. It s a bad practice that serves only to condition users into giving out personal information to any random person calling up and pretending to be from a bank.