I’ve had the unpleasant business of calling up call centers regarding two of my accounts – one’s with a bank and the other, about a subscribed service. I never really thought about it much before but call center agents have quite the access to our personal information.

For example, with the bank – all you need is to provide them with your name and account details and they can pull out your record and see everything pertinent about the account – all the personal information on the application sheet, your credit, your transaction history, etc… Heck even food delivery services have quite the database on them, right. Just give the guy your phone number and everything else is logged – name, address, landmarks, and even a brief physical description of it.

With the rise of identity theft nowadays, how safe is our information at the hands of these call center agents? What does it take to get access to accounts anyway? An answer to a security check simple question like “What’s you mother’s maiden name”? If these agents have such an easy access to our data, it’s just a matter of time when some enterprising bastard does something with them and gets away it.

I just wonder what measures companies are taking to protect out information.

Check out these other posts:

1. Keeping it real: blogs and identity theft
2. Call center con-text
3. Quit frontin’ wid dat call center voice
4. Yahoo!’s latest log-in protections
5. Paranoid security