And sometimes the customer service agent might accidentally give a scammer all of your personal info because many of them are barely trained kids with zero supervision.
"At any point, you might be talking to an under-trained 19-year-old newbie who just hit the floor," Megan says. "I can't legally provide a third party with addresses, phone, or credit card number, even with the customer's permission, because we have no way of knowing if we're talking to the actual person or a fraudster. But lots of times after training I heard of classmates getting away with this because that specific call wasn't monitored. Hell, I've accidentally done it. ... One time, a customer asked what address I had on file. I said something like, 'Ma'am, I have 123 Apple Court here.' WHOOPS. I just potentially confirmed info for a fraudster."
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"Oh, you forgot your own social security number? Well, we weren't voted
No. 1 in customer service for nothing! Let me just pull up your file ..."
Managers were almost never around to spray inexperienced workers with water and yell, "NO! BAD AGENT!" So mistakes like these apparently happened quite often ... unless of course your bank balance had two commas in it.