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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Phone systems that give you the prompt, "Press # for more options" etc are called Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. If you encounter an IVR that asks for credit card info, social security number, etc, don't enter it in! If you stay silent, you will usually be routed to an agent, though that varies on whichever system you are calling into.
Even if the system is designed for completely non-nefarious purposes, the IT people who maintain the phone system can analyze call logs to pull electronic keypresses (DTMF) and reconstruct every digit entered to capture your data. Most IT people would never consider abusing this access, but some organizations contract or sub-contract their phone support out to the lowest bidding third parties and might not do a great job of vetting their techs.
Giving this information to a live agent has its own risks, but if you initiated a call to a documented telephone number for the organization you are trying to reach, it is generally a safer option than keying in sensitive digit strings to an IVR. It is much harder for anyone outside of the call center to scan recorded audio for information like this. (Though technology is closing that gap)
Hey, I work with contact centers!
It's such a niche tech space. To play a bit of devil's advocate, a properly designed IVR will have "DTMF clamping" which veils the dial tones (the same ones you hear your phone play when dialing a number, did you ever notice the tones are unique?). The IVR should also disable logging completely. When on a call, they should be disabling call recording.
This is part of a process called PCI compliance, and it's fucking huge, because the penalties for it are insane, tens of thousands of dollars per month, plus extra for each incident of non-compliance. Some companies do transactions in the millions, at a $50 fine a pop. British Airways was fined $229 million back in 2017 for exposing data.
So really, companies are always going to do their due diligence to make sure your financial data is safe. It's too expensive not to.
Holly shit, I did PCI IVRs! We were quite paranoid, like you can quess card number by side channel attacks like timings. It's very niche, but fun part of tech world. PCI audits, security, HSMs, etc. Anyway, I never give my CC number ๐
As it should be. The moment it becomes cheap enough to ignore the law, consumer rights get shoved out of the window.
It is always better to say nothing and press nothing on a phone system. I've been doing that since the early 2000s, press nothing gets you right to a operator 9 times out of 10 and hung up on the 10th time.