That can still be gamed by any malicious SEO wizard. People will trust the top Google hit for "bank of america phone number" before they bother with finding it on the website.
How long are bank cards valid? I'd say they expire within 5 years? Also, if there is a merger, wouldn't they send you a new card with updated branding?
They could, but I just tried calling the numbers on the back of two cards from merged/acquired banks and they both forwarded to the acquiring bank. Yes it's a small sample size, but I suspect that there's enough money on the line and enough legacy contracts and systems that banks keep their communication channels active for some time.
I'm sure it's possible, but it strikes me as a pretty large hurdle. And even if they manage to pull it off, they also need no one from the bank to notice and report it.
They pay for it. Most people can't distinguish search ads from search results.
Would the new transparency requirement be useful to go after these fraudsters after the fact? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955606
It depends how aggressively Google pushes on it, and how carefully they verify the actual identity of the entities putting ads up.
"Alexa, confirm."
One gets a call from the bank, they give you a number to ring, you type the number in to Google search, the results come back listing that number and the bank's name -- identity confirmed!?!
The fraudsters just need _a_ website listed by Google.
My insurer called me out of the blue: I said I'd call back. Their number was not listed on any of the companies websites. I called the company, and said what has happened, took them about 10 minutes to confirm they'd called me and that the phone number I was called on was valid.
As it happened someone was trying to commit insurance fraud, saying we'd crashed in to them; but that's by-the-by (ie not relevant to the main story).
But I admit-- having just done a search for every institution I could think of, it seems Google AMP has done a lot to promote legitimate numbers. It used to be sites like GetHuman competing with or outranking the actual company website for contact information.
> "Hello. Please find the callback number on boa.com/contact. Please enter code XYZ to be connected directly to the agent regarding this matter. Thank you & goodbye."
It's not perfect & you'll still have some percentage of fraud that goes through, but I'd be interested to see the impact this has on fraud rates.
* EDIT: Callback number via the card as the other commentor noted probably works too.