Bank of Ireland phone call

fergalr

I just had a call from someone in Bank of Ireland. A call centre person who rings their customers to optimise their banking experience, yada yada.
I hesitantly agree to take the call (calls like this are usually a waste of time).

Then they start asking me to 'confirm my account', with information on recent transactions, codes from my laser card etc.
I'm pretty sure its genuinely Bank of Ireland - just feels like it is, accent, etc.

I say I won't give them any information, and try and explain why its bad to train your users to give out sensitive information over the phone.
This fails miserably.

They say they'll never ask for a credit card over the phone.
I explain why any information that they'll use to 'confirm my account' i.e. authenticate me, is information they shouldn't be training users to give out unsolicited.

I can't seem to get that point across.
We agree we can't have a conversation.


Why is the company training their users to give out information, such as recent transactions, and some numbers from the Laser card, out to an unsolicited phone call?
I know the difference between different numbers on my card; many people won't.


If I was running the bank, I would have a policy of never ringing my users up, and training them to give out sensitive information.
I don't understand.

If for business reasons, such calls were necessary, I'd provide users with a token by which I could authenticate the bank to them.

Reg_hurley

I regularly get these "courtesy" calls from AIB also.
The experience is pretty much the same as yours;
I respond by asking them to confirm theirs.
The call is usually ended with them sending me a text from the helpline number to confirm the call was legit.

What annoys me is that they never show the originating phone number when calling. It's always an unknown number.
I've given up trying to get them to stop calling.

fergalr

Reg_hurley wrote: »

The call is usually ended with them sending me a text from the helpline number to confirm the call was legit.

That's one way of solving it - although, I think I've read that the originating number of text messages can be spoofed, without too much hassle.

Reg_hurley wrote: »

What annoys me is that they never show the originating phone number when calling. It's always an unknown number.
I've given up trying to get them to stop calling.

Actually, in fairness to the lady who rang me (and is just doing her job) she did ask me if I wanted to be removed from the calling list, so hopefully that will happen. I'm pretty sure I've been removed from those lists before; it seems as if the flag reset when you take certain actions in the branch (apply for new products etc), dunno.

ArrBee

I had a related situation when I got a new credit card for work.
I rang the company to ask them to post me their bank details or direct me to the information on the web so I could set up a payment in my internet banking.
The poor girl couldn't understand why just reading out a bank account number to me on the phone wasn't good enough. Not even after I explained "you could be reading your own a/c number for all I know!"

UDP

Have had these before and gave out to the people on the phone pointing out how ridiculously insecure it is to be asking for private information via a blocked number. That was with Bank of Ireland - I think Vodafone used to do it but dont think they do now.