Observers warn that con artists who have largely shifted to the Internet to snare personal data may revert to the phone in response to the financial industry's efforts to stop online fraud.
And though some products on the market are designed to make phone use safer, many financial companies have policies against asking for this type of information, and none are using the phone anti-fraud products.
Kim Forde, a spokeswoman for American Express Co., said Amex sometimes initiates calls to customers, usually for service issues or to request information a card applicant may have omitted.
This could include Social Security numbers, addresses, or birth dates. In these cases, Ms. Forde said, Amex customer service representatives try to provide enough information to demonstrate to the customer or potential customer that the call is legitimate - for instance, by telling them the "type of product they're applying for, and a time frame."
Still, some customers balk at revealing personal data during an unsolicited call, and Amex usually refers them to its "well-known and -publicized" toll-free number.
Howard Graham, the senior vice president of consumer-direct for First Horizon National Corp., said the Memphis banking company sometimes calls customers, usually for marketing efforts and retention campaigns.
Few people object to answering the customer service representatives' questions, but those who do are instructed to place a return call themselves, Mr. Graham said. "In the scripting," he said, call center representatives "don't try to overcome that objection." They give out a phone number that the customer can verify on First Horizon's Web site.
First Horizon also makes it a point not to "ask the things that we should know," Mr. Graham said, giving Social Security numbers as an example.
Naftali Bennett, a senior vice president at Cyota Consumer Solutions, a unit of RSA Security Inc. in Bedford, Mass., said those sorts of objections are not surprising, because consumers are frequently advised by their banks and other financial watchdog groups to be skeptical of unsolicited e-mails asking for personal data, and many people perceive unsolicited phone calls as equally threatening. "The same rules that apply on the Internet should apply to phone calls," he said.
As banks become more attuned to online fraud, Mr. Bennett said, "the fraudsters will, at some point, migrate to other channels," including the phone.
John Zurawski, the vice president of sales and marketing for Authentify Inc. in Chicago, told American Banker by e-mail that phone scams are particularly hard for consumers to spot, because "the individual's resources are usually more constrained than" a business'.
Authentify offers a product banks can use to record customers' voices at branches or over the phone. When they initiate subsequent calls, banks can play back the recording to verify that their calls are legitimate. But Mr. Zurawski said no company has bought the system yet.
PassMark Security Inc. also sells a product for banks to authenticate phone calls. Lin Johnstone, PassMark's chief executive, said she is seeing "more and more interest" in such products, but none of that has translated to sales yet.
PassMark is well known for its software that confirms Web sites are real by displaying a pre-selected image to people when they log in. Its phone product uses a phrase selected by the customer that can be read back to them when they are called by the bank.
Mr. Zurawski attributed his lack of sales to a reluctance on banks' part to be the first to test the waters.
"The banking business has traditionally been very somewhat conservative, and a number of them are watching how the early adopters will fare," he said. "Many of the solutions available today have very short track records."
Mr. Bennett said there is little need for such systems. His company has no products for authenticating banks to customers over the phone, and he said he has no plans to develop one.
He said the best way for banks to ease customer worries is for the service representative to stay on the line and answer any questions they may ask. Few criminals would have either the patience or the knowledge for this. "They just have much easier things to do in life," he said. "Make it relatively hard for them, and they'll move on to easier prey."
