First off, I have always thought my wife is smarter than I am. She is a serious science and math person, where I am more about more philosophy and literature (basically comes down to me not wanting to work hard enough to come up with a real answer for a question). But just like most people, including me, she had to learn to be security aware. It really comes down to the fact that most people are basically trusting. So when someone calls you and says, “I am so-and-so from such-and-such company”, we tend to say “OK, I believe you.”
Here’s what I am talking about. A while back, we signed up for a service that would send us a new water filter every 6 months for our refrigerator. It was very convenient, and it reminded us not to wait until the water turns a funny color before we changed filters. But when we starting moving into our new house, we got a new fridge which has a different water filter which the company we were using doesn’t sell. So, we canceled the old service.
Well, the cancellation didn’t go through for some reason, and they shipped a water filter and charged our credit card. The filter got lost in the mail since the post office didn’t forward it to our new address (probably better since we didn’t have to worry about shipping it back). So we called and told them what was going on. They said they would now cancel the service, and they would credit us for the lost filter. Great, thanks.
Well, this morning, my wife got a call from the same company. The lady said that for some reason they couldn’t find our credit card information in their system, so they could not credit our card. So, she asked my wife for our credit card number. My wife told her that she was not comfortable giving that information out to someone who called us.
OK, I love my wife so much. How many people would have just said, “OK…here it is.” More than likely everything is kosher with the call, especially since the story the lady gave fit so well with the situation. But that is not the point. If someone calls and asks for this kind of information, I don’t care if the caller ID says it is coming from the right number (it didn’t), the story fits well (it did), and you recognize the person’s voice (she didn’t because I made the original call). You still have to be cautious. And that company really needs to make themselves aware of this.
Awesome job, April. Have I told you I love you lately?
Vet
