Calling a Customer Care Department or Company
No matter if we purchase services or goods online, we like to be secured that our booking is made properly. That is why we usually call the customer care department of the respective company to confirm the quoted offer online and to submit our credit card details and other personal data as address occupation and annual incomes, for example. None of us thinks, however, about the negative consequences that this may lead to. Let me clarify it for those of you who are still lucky to avoid personal information pirates so far.
Most of the customer care call centres are based in offshore offices in India, because it is very easy to find good deals for cheap calls to the country and the labour force there is not highly paid. Companies based in countries such as United Kingdom and Australia open call centres in different destinations over the world where it costs them less to run their businesses. It is a serious step and often they use expert services such as office removals in Sydney for the relocation. Unfortunately what happens with all of the personal data that is entered in the call centre’s CRM system is a mystery. It is a very common misfortune that the main personal database about the people is sold to criminals or marketing firms – this includes credit card information, medical and financial records, property address and state information, confidential data about other companies those customers work for. It can be basically anything that you can imagine. The worst thing is that when you call as a customer to one of those offices everything you say is immediately added to your file and there is no way back once it is in a written form.
The best thing you can do in order to protect yourself from such “thefts” of individual data is to ask the company that you are calling if they have a personal privacy data policy and if they can send you at least a copy of a paper that can prove that. Do that in advance as once the trick is done no matter how hard you call India, for example, or another country where companies have call centres, to speak with the local authorities all they will be able to do for you then is to assure you that they will fight corruption in future. Be smart and do not give your details to anyone without a guarantee for privacy no matter how professional they look.
