Not at all, you just need to call a known-good number. You don't just
> dial any number you're given, but rather, you need to dial the number
> on the back of your bank card to contact your bank.
Why do we get less credulous when we have fancier technology.
Many years ago, after I bought the house I still live in, a year or two later I got a call from a person representing himself as an IRS agent auditing the person who sold me the house and wanted to know what my records showed I paid for the house. I told him I'd have to look up my records and call him back. He gave me his phone number (a Centrex number).
I found the records but I did not call him back on the Centrex number. I looked up the main number for the local IRS office in the phone book, called that, and asked for him by name, not by number.
The PBX attendant found his number and rang him. She also told me his extension number -- the same last four digits as the Centrex number. This confirmed that he was indeed an IRS employee and that he had given me a good number. Something I was not willing to take just on his representation over the telephone.
So now with technology it seems people do not take even the most basic precautions. At that time there was no caller ID, no internet, hardly any computers and no one expected a private citizen to have a fax. Just POTS.
Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com