Tuesday, August 16, 2005

A matter of privacy

My phone rang this afternoon and my caller ID said that "error" was calling. I picked it up and a woman asked to speak to Georgiana. I told her this was Georgiana and she asked if this was Georgiana Lee and I said yes. She said she was calling from M and T Bank about my account I share with Tolford Lee. Right there I stopped her.

I don't know a Tolford Lee. I don't have an account at M and T Bank. I didn't know if it was some weird phishing scheme or if she was about to tell me something about someone's account when she absolutely shouldn't, but whatever it was I didn't want to be involved.

She said she had gotten my telephone number from information and she seemed quite doubtful that I don't share an account with Tolford (who may spell his or her name completely differently).

It seems to me that when you are in the business of finance you should be pretty careful about who you call and what you tell them. I mean what if I had told her to close the account or something?

It kind of reminds me of when I used to get all these calls for Gladys someone who was supposed to come in for her pacemaker checks. For a year I got these calls and every single time I told them to ask her for the correct number when she came in but they never did. It's kind of important that your cardiologist be able to get ahold of you and again, they used to leave very personal medical information on my voice mail.

The same sort of thing happens to me at work. Several times a month someone makes an error and emails me sensitive financial information.

It's a disturbing trend and I wish people would be more careful about other people's data.

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