In my last post, I discussed how keeping up to date and raising bank customers’ awareness of evolving phone scams can help reduce a criminal’s ability to steal somebody else’s personal information to socially engineer a bank or financial institution.

The recent article, Top 5 vishing techniques, outlines some of the most commonly used phone methods criminals use to trick banking customers into divulging personal and financial information that they can use to commit identity theft. These techniques include:

Caller ID Spoofing: While I’ve discussed this one at length, bank customers receive a call that appears to be from their bank or credit union. The Caller ID shows either a specific bank or credit union, or generically displays “Bank” or “Credit Union.”

Social Engineering: In what is described as “a fancier, more technical form of lying,” social engineering techniques are automated recordings that tend to sound very professional to convince people into sharing their personal or financial data.

VoIP: This Internet-based phone system can facilitate vishing by allowing multiple technologies to work together. From a Caller ID perspective, criminals using VoIP to spoof a wireless or landline device number can deceive unsuspecting victims to think they are receiving a call from their bank.

Wardialing: This automated system calls specific area codes with a message that appears to be coming from a local or regional bank or credit union. Once the call is picked up, a recording asks the recipient to enter their bank account number, credit or debit card numbers, and PIN codes.

Dumpster Diving: Yes, criminals still resort to digging through dumpsters to salvage any lists of client phone numbers. Once a list is retrieved, the visher can program the numbers into a system for a more targeted attack.

Education is critical to protecting your bank and customers from such vishing scams. One of my recommendations outside of implementing an identity authentication solution that validates Caller ID and ANI, is to educate yourself and your customers about the latest vishing scams. It’s in the best interest of both parties. Doing so can help reduce the number of your customers from falling victim to identity theft, as well as decrease the number of risky phone calls your call center receives from criminals using stolen or false information to defraud your bank.

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