Don't ask me to confirm who I am!

[Inthebathagain]

Is it just me who can't get their head around a bank/company ringing you up from an unknown number, telling you who they are and expecting you to confirm your mother's maiden name/dob etc?

How do I know you are who YOU say you are?!

Wherever I point this out to the person on the end of the phone, they always tell me to put the phone down and ring the company line I find on the internet...which often gets you caught up in a queue of at least 30mins.

Surely there must be some way of them giving a little information and you confirming the rest of the information? Or some other way that I as a consumer can be happy that I'm not being scammed?

AIBU?

But why didn't they tell you the last three transactions? That would tell you that they were the bank

We just say "can you confirm who you are? No?, oh dear, you had better call back when you can" and end the call.

Because if it isn't you, they have divulged personal information.

Going back, before the madness, there was a vaguely inbuilt protection around expecting to speak to a man or a woman. But I wouldn't want to be the first bank that declined to speak to a "woman" just because they had a rich baritone (or vice versa).

When blockchain was a thing, I was exposed to various "theories of trust" (so you didn't have to be ...😀)

Just bumping this to say, the government understands why a mix of similar genuine and scam calls is a bad thing!

UK to ban all cold calls selling financial products
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65466653

The government said the blanket ban on cold calls selling financial products would cover legitimate calls as well.
This will mean that "anyone who receives a call trying to sell them products such as cryptocurrency schemes or insurance will know it's a scam", it said.

@forrestgreen , mine did too,,years ago - asking whether I’d be interested in internet banking.

When they asked for personal info I put the phone down, took their number (last call landline, this is how long ago it was) and phoned their fraud line - who said it was on the level.
How they can still be doing this - unsolicited phone calls - defeats me.

Funny how the default for spam calls is to be opted in, whereas when it was about porn it was to be be opted out and you had to choose to opt in.

Those of us that remember premium rate numbers will also remember that they were automatically enabled and - certainly in the case of Virgin Media - you had to pay to block them.

Combination of losing my landline and an aggressive spam blocker on my mobile means I've forgotten what they are like.