hppt

buzzword of the day: pretexting

v. the act of pretending to be someone who you are not, by telling an untruth, or creating deception. The practice of pretexting typically involves tricking a telecom carrier into disclosing personal information of a customer, with the scammer pretending to be the customer. At present, the majority of wireless telephony providers consider the practice of pretexting to be illegal. (Wikipedia)

with the current boardroom fiasco in tech giant HP, non-exec Chairman Patricia Dunn has come under fire for allegedly ordering an investigation into boardroom leaks to the media. the methods that the agency she hired however, included pretexting, where someone calls up the phone company and impersonates a board director to obtain their phone records. the legendary VC Tom Perkins, formerly of Compaq, resigned from the HP Board as soon as these allegations came to light. a formal investigation has now been launched by the SEC and the State of California.

has to be a buzzword, because i was deep into the Newsweek article, and as i got out of the subway, the media talking heads were focusing on the term, and telling viewers to stay tuned to 'learn how to protect themselves from this practice'.

hmmm ... reminds me of the time i had to pretend i was my ex-gf, just to break into her MSN account. well, those were the days when Hotmail was unsecure. thankfully. if not, i would not learn some details about my own personal 9/11. can that be categorized under pretexting?