Quote:
Originally Posted by SaintessHeart
This question probably won't be understood by most of you here, but I'll ask anyway for the sake of hit-or-miss.
I have recently got this phone call from this woman with a weird China accent (devoid in Singaporeans). I asked where did she get my number from, and she said that I "took a survey" and left my phone number there. From there she began asking a series of survey-like questions (which I all gave random answers and "IDK"s for....I love fooling around with phone surveyors) before asking for my identification number "for confirmation".
It seems like a bit of social engineering to me at that moment, so I simply went with a "Why do you need that?" and "I don't leave my IC no. on public surveys.". She bulled that she is just "a contractor" so I asked to "speak to her boss", from there when she cut the phone line.
The phone number is with-held. Is there a way to get a with-held number, or get the phone company to reveal it without going through a lawsuit? I know phone companies are not allowed to reveal with-held numbers, only to the person who owns the line.
P.S I know a few tricks to defeat social engineering, but I am incapable of pulling such heists off myself. So putting up tips on how to call and which information to seize is pretty useless for me.  |
I have a simple rule... if your caller ID says "Withheld", "Unavailable", "Private Caller", "Out of Area", or looks clearly munged (0-000-000-0000 for a real example), then you really aren't serious about talking to me and I send it to voicemail. If you don't leave a message on my voicemail - that just confirms you aren't serious about talking to me and I'll put you on my special "no ring always to voicemail" list if you left an actual number.
That clears up a lot of problems. And yeah, Saintess, you were basically being telemarketed at the least and more likely being phished/scammed/whatever. Real surveys will clearly identify themselves and what the survey is for.
Caller ID can be hoaxed/screwed with by PBX systems and other tools. Hell, my wife's company (large publicly traded firm) had idiots in their IT group who couldn't get their phones to give the same output... a few phone numbers would say "company name", some would say "unavailable" some "private" and some "out of area".