http://www.mortgagedaily.com/Consumers/PhonePhishing030113.asp
Consumers who receive incoming calls from their financial institutions are vulnerable to phone phishing scams, where dubious characters extract private data under the premise that they are the consumer's financial service provider. Consider the example of a mortgage borrower who receives a call where the caller ID is blocked. The caller could have researched public records to learn the identity of the property owner and the name of the mortgage lender. With such information in hand, the caller pretends to be the lender and begins asking the consumer for personal data as part of security procedures. The caller winds up giving out personal information to an unknown party. JPMorgan Chase & Co. Spokeswoman Amy Bonitatibus acknowledged that Chase asks for customer verification so that information is not shared with other occupants at the home. "But we always introduce ourselves, and we also state the reason for the call," she said. Another scenario involves a call that is only identified as a toll-free telephone on caller ID. This is the case with calls from Bank of America Corp., which also asks for verifying personal data. BofA didn't comment in response to a request for clarification about its procedures. While a toll-free number in the caller ID display might seem reassuring to the borrower, it doesn't take much for a criminal operator to obtain a toll-free number and execute a phone phishing scheme...
