I just received a phone call from a robot. The robot was allegedly calling on behalf my local pharmacy. It asked me to press 1 if my name was Chris Kasten. OK, that seemed simple enough so I pressed 1.
Next it said that “for my protection” I should enter my birth date. I hung up.
I’m sorry, but if your robot calls me, I’m not OK with me giving you my private data. Surely there’s a better way? It seems relatively common to spoof caller ID so the caller-id display just isn’t good enough. I also know it doesn’t take much to whip up an autodialer/attendant type system to make these sorts of calls. Doesn’t that seems like an interesting way to harvest data?
Am I too paranoid on this?
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1 comment
Rich G.
April 30, 2010 at 10:37 pm (UTC -7)
Not too paranoid at all.
I’m starting to re-think paranoia as a lifestyle choice. Meaning I’m not paranoid enough.
The problem for me is it’s insidious. Facebook specifically is falling into that “is it worth it” category for me.
I give it birthday information, who my relatives are, and where I went to school… the thing is SO many security questions are: High School Mascot, Maiden Names, Middle Names, etc. First pet? Could be on there, maybe in a quiz? Not sure… But social hacking is being done by facebook now and it’s being made available in everybody’s profiles by default. I’m not comfortable with it.
So, no. You’re not too paranoid. Probably not paranoid enough.