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What is pretexting?

February 1st, 2006 by uCertify Leave a reply »

Pretexting is a type of social engineering attack. It is the act of creating and using an invented scenario to persuade a targeted victim to release information or perform an action and is typically done over the telephone. It is more than a simple lie as it most often involves some prior research or set up and the use of pieces of known information (e.g. for impersonation: date of birth, Social Security Number, last bill amount) to establish legitimacy in the mind of the target.

This technique is often used to trick a business into disclosing customer information, and is used by private investigators to obtain telephone records, utility records, banking records and other information directly from junior company service representatives. The information can then be used to establish even greater legitimacy under tougher questioning with a manager (e.g., to make account changes, get specific balances, etc). Copyright © 2009-2010 Wikipedia. All rights reserved.

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