Dungeon Master Forum

I just had a phone call from my tv/phone/internet provider, VirginMedia. The guy opened the conversation and said "Hello Mr Hill, I'm from VirginMedia, can I have your password please?"

"WTF?" I said. "No, you can't until you tell me what this call is about."

"I can't tell you that until you confirm your password."

"Um, well, until you confirm what this is about, you're not getting my password. I didn't ask for this call, you could be anybody."

"I can ask you some security questions?"

"No thanks." I hung up.

So I rang customer service, blah blah, anyway to cut a long story short I spoke to a very nice lady who confirmed that they did want to speak to me, but she also confirmed that the guy didn't follow procedure correctly (although another person in the the chain earlier said he *did* follow procedure. Huh?)

So I asked to make a formal complaint that the procedure sucks, is alarmist and arouses customer suspicion in these times where we're supposed to be more vigilant with our personal details. Whether or not anything changes is anyone's guess.

Anyone else experienced something like this?

Mo, although I believe companies are complete morons in general with security stuff like this. A colleague at work was complaining that the router provided by sky, i think it was, had the password printed on the bottom - and was pretty obvious. So he wanted to change it. However, it was hard decoded into the router. So if anyone could access his router remotely they could lock him out. He could not get them to change it. He bought another router and fought to get the details to install that one instead!

wow, that's pretty nuts. I mean honestly anyone could start doing that now and get peoples personal passwords and transfer or use their acounts etc. Their potential for that is alarming since if you get used to them speaking to you like that, when some fraud does phone, you are less likely to suspect.


Besides the fact that they just called your phone, from their service.. so chances are.. WHO ARE THEY GOING TO GET TO ANSWER?? DUH!! And what about the information they had to tell you? was it personal, financially ruining? a matter of life and death? no probably not.. usually they call about late payments, or offering you new services.. neither of which give away any reall personal info if it happens to NOT be you answering..