I am just going to throw this out there because I am honestly a little perplexed by it. This week I called AT&T to setup a new business phone line and DSL. During the process, they asked me, "What do you want the caller ID to say when you call people?" So I gave my company name and finished the order with no questions asked.
So what right?
Well, what if I said my company's name was MasterCard, Disc. Card, etc? So, I did it again. I called them back from one of my rental properties and again, they were completely willing to accept the order with no questions asked. In my honest opinion (and keep in mind I am Dumb Little Man) this is absolutely begging for fraud. Not for the expense of the phone service, but if some bad guy does this there is nothing stopping them from calling 15,000 homes claiming to be a credit card company or collections agency trying to scheme personal information. Once they get what they want, the bail and move to some other location.
Thinking about my 86 year old Grandmother, she would definitely fall for this.
Now, I am certainly no expect on this stuff but I'll share a few tips from the .gov friends at the US Department of Justice.
In one sense, the nature and content of a telemarketing scheme to defraud is limited only by the ingenuity and skill of the scheme's organizers. Fraudulent telemarketers who observe that certain types of business, or certain business trends, are widely publicized in news media will incorporate references to such reports in their solicitations of victims. In practice, most fraudulent telemarketers operate one or more of the following types of schemes: charity schemes, credit-card, credit-repair, and loan schemes, cross-border schemes, Internet-related schemes, investment schemes, lottery schemes, office-supply schemes, "prize-promotion" schemes, "recovery-room" schemes, and "rip-and-tear" schemes.
There is a lot more information on their site, "What Kinds Of Telemarketing Schemes Are Out There?".
