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  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    katralla wrote: »
    I failed security checks for the tax credits helpline once, because apparently I had my own name wrong- crazy.

    I'm surprised they told you it was your name you 'failed' on because they aren't supposed to. If you are a fraudster you could go away and find out the correct name, any middle names or initials etc. At Child Benefit we would 'fail' a call and be reprimanded for that kind of thing. If you let a caller through security and they haven't answered the questions 100% accurately (accurately being the information we have on screen!) then you can actually, in extreme circumstances, lose your job.

    In a lot of cases it can be as simple as a caller forgetting that they put all three middle names on their application form and only telling us two of them, and accidentally saying the wrong house number or not confirming which county they live in. Stupid? Kinda. It has prevented a LOT of fraud though. Last year we had a scam group calling to request Child Benefit numbers pretending to be the customer. They knew pretty much everything about the customer and in some instances we were giving the number, believing it was the customer. We introduced an additional security check which was quite personal to the customer and if the caller couldn't pass it they couldn't have the number over the phone. It pissed off a load of genuine callers but it stopped us giving the child benefit number to fraudsters. If a fraudster has your number it opens up a gateway to a whole lot of other fraud. It's quite scary to think that whilst most people are sat at home moaning about these security issues that there are people out there trying to exploit the loopholes, and when HMRC (or any organisation really!) tries to do something about it they are shown in a bad light. Can't win, really.

    Still, won't be my problem from December! :yippe: :yippe: :yippe:

    Oh, and Child Benefit decision makers are just referred to as Case Workers.
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