0800 — licence to scam
On Saturday afternoon Anna received a call out of the blue. Hello, said a man, I’m from BT and you need to pay your phone bill, so could you please confirm your BT account number, the first line of your address (for security reasons) and then give me your credit card number?
I’m sure some people fall for a scam like that, but not Anna. And the scammers rather foolishly didn’t block their phone number, so after a simple 1471 she was on the phone to BT to let them know someone was using their name to make people victims of identity theft.
BT checked Anna’s details and the phone number she’d obtained and told her that it was a genuine BT call. So she lodged a complaint. And I’ve just lodged a complaint, too. This doesn’t do BT’s reputation any good, and it sends a confusing message to its customers, who are hearing different things from their banks’ security departments sensitive to phishing and other tricks. Until BT change this policy they will be giving a licence to fraudsters who can exploit vulnerable people in their name.
Update: BT called me back on this issue within a couple of hours of my complaining via their website. They said the original BT caller shouldn’t have asked for the credit card number, rather it should have been up to the customer to offer it, and only then would they have taken it. I said this wasn’t really the point — BT should not be accepting credit card numbers on a call they initiated, otherwise fraudsters will still be able to defraud people in their name. So the complaint goes a stage further. We’ll see what happens.
