What is "social engineering" or "pretexting"?

What is "social engineering" or "pretexting"?

Robert Siciliano (Identity Theft Expert and CEO) gives expert video advice on: What are the most common kinds of low-tech identity theft?; What kind of personal information should I avoid giving out?; What are some of the ways my identity can be stolen? and more...

Social engineering is the modern day con. It's when a con man or con woman uses what we call a confidence crime, they come off all sales-y like a car salesman, and they're trying to extract data from you. They may call your home, posing as the lottery, posing as Publisher's Clearing House, let's say, posing as a bank, and their goal is to try to extract data from you. Often, elderly may get a call from someone posing as Medicaid, let's say, and they'll say, "At the end of the month, you're not going to get your check or your prescriptions unless you give up this information, your Social Security number, because the computers crashed." And so they'll lie and they'll use ruses to get data from someone.