Ever thought why nearly all scammers start with a question asking you to confirm your name, eg "Is that Daniel Malkoun?" Of course we are naturally inclined to naively say "Yes".
There are two main things which normally follow, neither of them are good!
Once your voice is recorded as saying "Yes" this can be played back on certain voice activated recognition systems including many banks and HMRC. Confirmation of changes to certain services or authority levels can be highjacked as a result such as change of address for newly issued credit cards!
The second, scary consequence is that once you have confirmed by saying "Yes" your name, telephone number you have validated your phone number to other scammers who will buy this data. It is valuable to scammers to have live targets or "marks" where some personal data is already confirmed as they can use this as a starting point for other forms of identity fraud.
So next time you get a call from an unrecognised number and the first question is asking to confirm who you are, think twice before saying "Yes".
Ask who it is is always safer and if they repeat the question demanding you to confirm, it is almost certainly a scam. If you are waiting for a genuine call from a service provider ask them to confirm who it is before making a scammers life easy to defraud you!
So in short, protect yourself before you willy nilly say "Yes" without knowing who you are speaking with.
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