To be clear: I didn't set myself up as having any 'bright ideas to solve it', far less did I expect to be pressed into providing them. As I understand it, the thread was moved from a different forum to this one precisely because it is a subject for discussion. However, this, I feel, throws into still sharper relief a point which I've made elsewhere, which is that we as consumers have been lulled into believing that it it our responsibility to come up with solutions to problems such as this, whereas in fact it isn't.
Back in the day, this was never an issue. If you got a phone call from any major company with whom you were dealing, telephone / utility provider or otherwise, you answered the phone and cracked on with the conversation. If - and I do say 'if' - there is any official record of the extent to which that practice led to detrimental results for the customer, I would very much like to see it. But even then - bearing in mind that this is a telephone provider's forum - does it not seem contradictory that the same company who are asking us for our personal information in order to 'verify who we are' when they called us, are telling us in the next breath never to give out personal information unless we are 100% certain that the caller is legitimate?
I would go further: the reason we are advised to be cautious about giving out personal details, is because of the vast assortment of scam calls that many of us receive on a several-times-daily basis. There are an assortment of methods of addressing that problem, all dealt with in greater depth elsewhere on this forum; but once again, the reality is that it really shouldn't be our problem to address. We as consumers, in general, do not possess the technical nous to be able to truly combat this issue, and why should we?
If, despite the warnings, despite the countless different varieties of scam call, you are quite comfortable giving out your personal details to someone who may or may not be who they claim to be - telephone provider or otherwise - then by all means do just that. I don't have any 'bright ideas' to solve the problem, except to say that if enough people persistently refuse to give out their details in response to 'security questions', the various companies involved will eventually have to do what they should have done in the first place and come up with bright ideas of their own to solve the probem, if indeed there is actually a problem to solve. As regards a practical alternative, the only currently workable one I know of is to obtain the caller's name and extension number and call them back on a known safe number - as long, as I mentioned above, as you don't mind waiting in a queue of indefinite length and even then very possibly not getting through to the right person. Alternatively, let them deal with the issue by e-mail, if that's a viable alternative. Other than that, since I'm not on the payroll of BT or any of the other telephone providers, I'm happy to entertain 'bright ideas' from anyone else who may have any - ideally, those who are on the payroll.
