LoadWB's Journal: Protecting personal info -- WTF are they thinking?

Admittedly, every so often I have money problems. As an independent consultant, sometimes I'm living hand-to-mouth, and that gets compounded by having large invoices which go over a month past due.

Today I get a call from Sprint, which was a bit different from calls in the past. It went basically like this: a woman with what I could not identify as an American accent tells me she's from Sprint, needs to discuss my account, and would like to verify the password on my account. Uhhhh, not on a cold-call, I don't think so.

This kind of call is very suspect. And rightly so. In the past, and still today, much telephone fraud is perpetrated in such a way. Hell, in the past they've flat out asked me for my SSAN!

The main difference this time was an actual number showed up in my CLID, versus before when it came up as "Unknown."

Cingular will call with an automated message saying to call 611 about my account. I don't think it would be such a horrible thing for Sprint to do something similiar, especially since you can reach an account representative by dialing 811. Believe me, I appreciate the reminders -- it doesn't happen often, even so I'd rather not forget to pay my phone bill.

There are no absolutes in this world in regards to protecting our personal information, but many companies just throw caution to the wind, seemingly a gesture of defeat. Seriously, I had a rep for Dell Financial Services tell me that protecting my SSAN didn't matter since people can get any information on me they want. So, wouldn't it also follow that they could USE that information to forge my ID over the telephone? In that case, why even bother to verify my identification?

Sheesh.