Random Telephone Calls (asking to confirm personal info)

Over the last 2 weeks I have had 4 phone calls from the same 0845 telephone number.

The person (indian call centre) just asks to speak to Mr FD and says they are calling regarding a personal financial matter. They then ask me to confirm my date of birth and address.

At this point I have asked them to confirm where they are calling from, and indicate what particular item it is they want to discuss. Each time they have said they can not confirm this information as it breaks data protection and security.

I then explain that if they can not confirm where they are calling from, or tell me anything about what they want to discuss, then I am unwilling to give them any personal information. However if they want send me a letter confirming what it is they want to discuss then I will get back in touch.

Am I being arsey or am I right not to give personal info out to random strangers on the telephone?

You are being completely right

normally people identify themselves.

i.e. “this is the wonga wonga bank, what is your pin?” 😉

I had one from ‘windows security’ today.

Kept the lovely Indian woman talking for 4 minutes about double glazing 😆

Never give anything over the phone (or the doorstep!)

I had one of these recently too. All they would say was that it was from my “Internet Bank” and they needed to discuss something with me. I went along with it (tentatively) and it turned out to be absolutely genuine. They’d seem some atypical transactions on my credit card and had placed a stop on it. After going through all the info, they lifted the stop and all was well.

Looks like some of them (I’m with cahoot) are particularly reticent about identifying themselves to (potentially)complete strangers.

Next time, ask them for a number you can call them on – and check the number out before you do.

Have some fun with them. I do this with all the telesales companies. Tell them what they want to hear (but not real information obviously). If they’re selling, tell them you’re not interested but want to hear more. As sales guys all they’ll hear is that you want more. Switch the phone on speaker, make a coffee, switch the TV on and let them talk to their hearts content.

After 5 mins they’ll ask if you’re intersted. Tell them that you’re not, but want to hear more. Repeat and see how much of their time you can waste. Guaranteed they’ll never call back after they’ve realised.

Nothing wrong with that I wouldn’t give my details to some random caller either.

I’ve had it happen twice although in both instances it was genuine, 1st was the tax office and one was my bank’s data security section. Both times I refused to give any information and instead got a number to call them back on. Once I checked the number was OK i called back and sorted stuff out. no problem and only a minor delay. The Bank was fine about me not wanting to give my details the tax office bloke was a bit arsey.

I had this couple times too, they then took offence when I asked them to confirm who they were as they rang me. Like you said send me a letter if its that important, still waiting 6 months down the line 🙂

If it’s genuine, they’ll say who they are and generally give you a number that you can call them on which you can then google to confirm it’s legit or just call the bank/etc directly.

They then ask me to confirm my date of birth and address.

At that point I hang up.

I don’t agree to hand over personal info. I tell them I’ll call back (and then do so via the current number published online).

I don’t waste the time of cold-callers. They’re just some poor sod trying to make a living at a pretty s–ty job and f—ing them over isn’t going to help anyone.

Yeah, had one of those call centres.
Scam centre “Your ISP has reported you are having some problems with your internet connection and your browser freezing”
Me “No”
Scam centre “click”

I don’t waste the time of cold-callers. They’re just some poor sod trying to make a living at a pretty s–ty job and f—ing them over isn’t going to help anyone.

Sorry, but I’ve signed up to the TPS so don’t want or expect cold calling, especially at 20:00 on a weeknight / Friday night after I’ve just got the kids settled. They get no sympathy from me (and I worked for 3 years in a Call Centre after Uni).

I’ve had similar from “Norton Antivirus”, saying that the computer is infected. Just ask lots of quetions and repeat them Paxo-style if you don’t get straight answers, they’ll hang up if they’re not legit.

Currently getting repeated calls about “your Panasonic TV”… dunno why they think we’ve got one, last one we bought was 10 years ago.

got this yesterday and it was from barclaycard, a courtesy call to check that i could use their internet banking.

i then returned the call, got the answerphone number with another 0845 to call with complaints, that put me through to barclaycard

i told them if i get another unsolicited call i will close the account. no brainer really as i didnt want it moved from egg, i have had issues with barclaycard in the past……

still as ive warned them, i might wait a week before i pull the plug

HSBC do it to me, though they do at least tell me who they are. When I refuse, they ask me to call them back on the official number.

I had an amusing ( to me) circular debate with my electricity suppliers the other week

“Can I speak to Mr Tandem please this is power whizz ltd”
“speaking”
“Can you just confirm your identity by telling me these details please”
“You phoned me, you are speaking to me, what do you want”
“I can’t tell you anything until you confirm your identity”
“You wanted to speak to me, youare speaking to me, what do you want”

eventually I got bored and put the phone down but there is no way on earth they are getting that info over the phone from me. I do not wish to speak to them and have told them to stop with the phone calls

I had this from Santander. Unusual activity on a card, we suspected it was a transfer between accounts that had triggered it but not 100%. It was a recorded message that kept ringing our landline and mobiles all evening, kept picking up but then putting the phone down when it wasn’t a real human. I naively assumed the computer would give up and tell a human to ring me, and then I could check they knew who they were calling before I started giving out details.

Anyway, thankfully the calls stopped overnight, but the next day we got a recorded message threatening to put a stop on our accounts until we complied. I think my wife called them in the end rather than respond to the calls, but the long and short of it was we upped sticks and changed banks on principle 🙂

What OMITN said ^^

I always say I’ll call them back. Amazingly they won’t give out their phone number and if you try 141, it says ‘the caller with held their number’.

After 5 mins they’ll ask if you’re intersted. Tell them that you’re not, but want to hear more. Repeat and see how much of their time you can waste. Guaranteed they’ll never call back after they’ve realised

You do know it’s some poor schmo on minimum wage (or less) who hates calling you as much as you hate being called, don’t you?

I regularly get this from amex. Usually always genuine, but I never ‘break’and give/confirm my details! Ends up in a stale mate for a few minutes, then we both hang up!
Resolved by ringing back on known number to discuss their concern!

DrP

thats no excuse molgrips

I think it is.

Why? Seriously they are being incredibly rude to me by phoning me up and wasting my time. Why do they deserve any consideration?

” I was only following orders” is no excuse

Either,

a) it’s a legitimate call, in which case it’s really bad practice for banks to be encouraging customers to give out personal details to cold callers, or

b) they’re criminals.

” I was only following orders” is no excuse

A lot of people would say the same about traffic wardens.

TJ, if it’s a case of job or no job, the n it definitely is an excuse. Moral principles are good, but you have to be pragmatic. And don’t compare a 15second unsolicited phone call with genocide.

The reason that Power Companies, Banks etc keep phoning you is that they actually make money from it. That’s right – the take-up rate more than compensates for those that are somehow aggrieved by it all. So, they’re really offering a service…..

One day companies (and individuals) will realise that “confirm” does not, under any circumstances, mean “tell me”.

If I’m asked to “confirm” my personal details I ask the caller to tell me what details they have and that I’ll tell them (or confirm) if they are correct or not.

I have been told by callers that they can’t do this owing to “the data protection” (their words, not mine). In this case I tell them that I can’t tell them anything for the same reason.

I’m with wombat here. As he says, ‘confirm’ means to say that details they have recited to you are correct. I’ll have to remember the data protection thing with my details too.

As someone said above, my bank do this (Halifax). I politely tell them that as I have no proof who they are that I will not talk to them but if they can give me a reference I will call them on an official number.

barclaycard have done similar to me before – email asking me to call their fraud line on a stated number that was not listed on ANY of their websites or paperwork

I phoned the “proper” fraud number and they confirmed it was a real email

Asked them whether they would honour any losses from the card if I gave out passwords to a random caller on the phone. “No”. Asked them what they’d think if a customer responded to an email asking for details “we’d never ask for that” – couldn’t see that receiving an email and then ringing an unknown number with my passwords was the same stoopid behaviour.

Wouldn’t trust the silly bastards as far as I could chuck’em

CountZero, the data protection thing is a bit or a bluffon my part, there’s nothing in any legislation (that I’m aware of) that prevents someone giving out their personal details to anyone but it amuses me to quote it back at them as they’ll almost certainly have absolutely no idea if the Data Protection Act applies to individuals.

Sometimes I tell them that it’s an offense for them to ask for my details but this generally only occurs if I’ve had a glass of wine 😉

Sometimes I say “give me 3 dates of birth and 4 pstcodes, and i’ll tell you which is mine!”

Sometimes they play along….

DrP

I once had a phone call from a firm who wanted 10k to buy some land, once the land had planning permission they sell it to developers for a huge mark-up….sounds pretty logical and the return on the money is fantastic.
I expressed some interest and after the phone call i googled the company, seems there is a genuine market that operates in this way but most firms into this racket just get loads of people to sign up, they then buy some land (and bank the rest) and very slowly go through the planning process…they usually get rejected and you never see your money again, but you do own a nice piece of land that is good for nothing somewhere in the south east!

When they called back to finalise payment i hung up, they called again and i hung up…i should have just said i’m not interested but i couldnt be bothered, easier to just press clear on them.

They phoned almost daily and in the end i took to answering the call but putting them on loudspeaker and just listening to the desperate and increasingly funny tone of the voice as the caller said my name over and over again….it got to the point where i would let my other half, work colleagues, family etc listen in when they called….i started to admire the tenacity….the calls sadly stopped (months later) when i think they’d run out of patience during one call when i had them on loud speaker and i was sat there in silent hysterics….the tone changed and the caller spewed forth a foul mouthed tirade, this made me crease up even harder, by now my ribs were hurting and that was the end, never got another call from them.

Shame, i miss them.