Sabrina’s Money Matters

This is our 2nd day talking about social engineering. We’ve all watched enough detective shows to know that undercover police and investigators typically use other names, this is called pretexting. Call centers do this sometimes as well to avoid employees being accosted by customers. Although rare, it does happen, lol.

Again, I reference the explanation of Pretexting through Wikipedia:

Pretexting

is the act of creating and using an invented scenario (the pretext) to persuade a target to release information or perform an action and is typically done over the telephone. It’s more than a simple lie as it most often involves some prior research or set up and the use of pieces of known information (e.g., for impersonation: date of birth, Social Security Number, last bill amount) to establish legitimacy in the mind of the target.

An example I can think of offhand, though it seems harmless, is the Dell customer service department, after hours specifically. I called one day and received an Associate that called himself Jeff. Being that I could tell he was an overseas agent (India) I knew full well his name wasn’t Jeff. That name however, was either chosen by him or given to him to make American customers feel more at ease with the person they are speaking to over the phone. As simple as that sounds, it is a form of pretexting.

At my job we have a list of the pretexts used so that if one of the people that the pretext has been used on calls into our office on a number given them, we’ll know who it is by the name used, they’re aren’t simply decided on the spot.

There are countless videos on YouTube showing what some people think is Social Engineering when really it’s just dishonesty and could even be called theft of service because it benefits only the person using the pretext. One video I watched this morning was a guy getting two burgers and a fry from a fast food restaurant using a pretext. I was hoping to find a good example for you, but didn’t find one, hence no video on this post.

Can you think of any examples of pretexting that you’ve come across in your daily life?

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