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Comment by hugh4life | Hacker News Reader

"However, he has been a Bank of America customer for 20 years and was born a U.S. citizen, so he figured it could be a scam and that the bank would follow up if it was legitimate."

There is a lot of scamming going on. Just last week my mother got a recorded message with a computer generated voice saying they were from the IRS and they're filing a lawsuit and that she should call them back. I looked the number up online and just 30 minutes ago it seemed someone else got a similar phone call so I reported it to the government.

Companies and institutions who need information from people that could be used for identity theft really need to reach people in a way that they won't confuse it for a scam.

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> Companies and institutions who need information from people that could be used for identity theft really need to reach people in a way that they won't confuse it for a scam.

Yes! Occasionally I'll get a call from a company of which I'm a customer and they proceed to ask for PII before going on (usually medical companies). I reply by asking THEM to give me the info they have and I'll check if it's correct. Since some won't, I then ask them to prove who they say they are… as I can't tell them apart from a scam. Even though I know it's a broken process, I refuse to go along because this is something they need to fix.

Many companies unknowingly participate in creating an environment of bad processes making a fertile ground for scammers.

On a positive note, my banking institution sends me email notifications about stuff on my account, WITHOUT any links to their site. Yes, it takes a few extra clicks to get to their site but it stops the user conditionning to click on any link they see in an email that just happens to have a logo of the company with which they do business.

Your way of asking them to give you information & you confirming is equally harmful.

A scam running right now in India is when a customer gets a credit card from SBI Bank, somebody in the system sells this info (that they have got a SBI Credit card) & Name + Phone number.

Few days later, customer gets a first call that We are calling from Rewards section of SBI, you are entitled for 20% discount card, we will not ask you credit card info, just confirm if you have SBI card? Customer said Yes? Scammers update their database. Few more days, again somebody calls, says You HAVE card from SBI, for rewards, just confirm if it is Visa or MasterCard? Some other time they don't even ask, they insist you HAVE Visa, if you says Yes, they benefit, if you say No, they say sorry, mistake in our system, we will correct it. They still got what they wanted.

The moral is they build up the card info one bit at a time.

The only way to tackle is to deny you have any card on every call you get as officially Bank never calls you for rewards.

If they provide you PII that they have, that's just as bad since it could be someone else on the line.

Ideally, they would give you a way to call back via the main bank/business phone number.

The IRS will never call. They will send you a letter via certified mail.

Any story that begins with "someone called claiming to be the IRS" can be cut off at that point and conclusively determined to be a scam.

The IRS will send a letter, but it may arrive by regular USPS, not certified mail.

I know this because regular USPS is how the IRS contacted me and my SO regarding filing errors.

EDIT: typo

Yeah a normal notice of error from the IRS is not certified mail. But it will be a letter, not a phone call.

Do keep forever copies of all correspondence with them, including (especially) documentation that the issue was resolved.

Interesting story : The FBI wanted to contact me a few years ago. They called and left voice mail that I determined was 100% likely to be a scam. So I ignored the call (and a second one that confirmed my suspicions since the caller claimed to be from a different FBI office than the first).

A few weeks later two Agent Mulder type dudes showed up in my front yard...

Edit : yes we had a long discussion about how the FBI could make cold phone calls that didn't sound like a scammer.

Collection agencies contracted by the IRS actually can call people now, thanks to the FAST Act passed at the end of 2015.

> computer generated voice saying they were from the IRS

Looks like someone is doing something about that.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/business/irs-phone-scams-...

I always tell them that I will call them to verify them. Like calling Bank of America customer service first then ask to redirect the call that person.

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