I use my “line 1″ number (with my free minutes) rather than my “line 2″ one, and inspite of this people are perfectly happy to rattle off their CC details even though I tell them “you know I could be a con man, about to run off to Brazil”.

Quite odd really.

I’ve had someone ringing, at 5 to 6, several times, claiming to be from Quoteline Direct who do my car insurance, asking for CC payment for missed payments my car insurance. I always ask them to put it in writing, or email me, but nothing.

“Hello, it’s Bob from Cahoot. I need to speak to you about something important but first I need to verify your identity, can I have your date of birth please?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t give out security details to random callers.”
“But if you don’t tell me then I can’t give you this very important message.”
“Suits me.”
“But… but…”

In the end I gave him my date of birth as I figured it wasn’t hard to find, and the “very important message” turned out to be some sales blurb about some savings account, which they could have happily messaged me about on my account page and didn’t seem to require any security information anyway. So the poor chap got shouted at.

It does seem absurd, and Cahoot didn’t come up with any useful reply as to why they were doing it either.

There’s no money in the account now.

Twattus clottus.