How Outsourced Call Centers Are Costing Millions In Identity Theft

[Zalatix]

How much of YOUR personal information is being managed in countries that American law enforcement has no jurisdiction over?

http://consumerist.com/2008/10/how-outsourced-call-centers-are-costing-millions-in-identity-theft.html

A former Chase call center rep tells the story about this one thief who was able to rip off one customer for over $40,000, thanks to his constant outwitting out the internationally out-sourced security department. It wasn't that hard. Over and over again, he was able to commit credit card fraud just knowing the guy's name, social, and mother's maiden name.

The Americans would beg and plead with the Filipinos to not unblock the account, and over and over again they would. Says our insider, "if US security had been able to intervene from the get-go, he would never have been able to do so much financial damage. For the rest of his life, the true owner of that account will be dealing with the effects of this crime." It's not the outsourced place's fault, though. They're just following orders. It's whoever designed the laminated binder they were blindly following that should really be held accountable. Read the whole messed-up story below.

Here's the part of the story where some poor guy's account get's completely f-ed. This thief had been bounced to the out-sourced to security so often that he must have made a check list of any possible questions they would ask him. Through whatever means, he managed to get the answers to these questions. Now when he called, he could give us the information we were asking for, but by this point we knew his voice so well that we still tried to get him to security. It worked like this: We put him on hold and dial the extension for security. We get a security rep and start to explain the situation; we tell them he was able to give the right information, but that we know is the same guy that's been calling for weeks and we are certain he is not the account holder. They begrudgingly take the call. Minutes later another one of us gets a call from a security rep saying they are giving us a customer who has been cleared by them. And here the thief was back in our department. For those of us who had come to know him, the fight waged on night after night.

Chase is a revolving door. If you work there longer than a year, you're considered to have seniority. The few of us who knew this account was being raped could do nothing to protect it. Some newbie wouldn't know about the situation and would let the thief have his way with the account. The US security department became aware of the issue and put blocks on the account as well as incredibly long notes that explicitly said to not remove the block for any reason at any time. But sure enough, over and over, the guy would call in overnight, talk to the out-sourced security, and the block would be removed. Again, they were only able to verify with him with information that he was already known to have, yet that never seemed to deter them from clearing him.

Things got quiet for a while, and we thought maybe he'd finally been stopped from unblocking the account. Turns out that he'd actually been caught, but only after more than $40,000 in fraudulent charges on this one account. I cannot stress enough that if US security had been able to intervene from the get-go, he would never have been able to do so much financial damage. For the rest of his life, the true owner of that account will be dealing with the effects of this crime.

[gregoire]

1. Sounds more like the author doesn't like Filipinos

You always hear racists ranting about call centers outside of the US because they don't like the people that have jobs because of them.

[Zalatix]

2. The 'RACIST' canard only gets trotted out by anti-American bigots.

With anti-American bigots, it's okay to discriminate against American workers but when you protest the consequences of this, suddenly you're a racist. I wouldn't go around channeling bigots while claiming to be against bigotry.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. I do not read it that way at all.

I DO read it as discussing a well identified issue of call centers.
I was disgusted to find out that some US companies have their order centers in prisons, where convicts "work" by taking phone orders, thus have full access to personal information.

[dreamnightwind]

4. Really?

that's your take on this? Unbelievable.

We're supposed to give out our private info to unknown people in a foreign country who work in an unregulated environment when we have no idea what laws and enforcement mechanisms exist in their country regarding their use of this information? We're supposed to suffer customer support that is woefully inadequate from people whose main qualification to be supporting us is that they'll work for peanuts? We're supposed to look the other way while American jobs are disappearing to these call centers for the sole reason that it increases some multinational's bottom line? And when we speak up about it we can look forward to being called a racist?

This is a major issue that has received way too little attention, and it has nothing to do with racism.

[Marrah_G]

5. I would never give my personal information to a person I thought was in another country

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. How many examples would it take to change your mind?

Bank records, tax records, cyber-stalking, credit cards, ID theft, industrial espionage, the list of offenses already committed is very long and gets longer every day.