I got a call from my bank earlier today, trying to get me to finish my mortgage application. I think it was them, but I refused to authenticate, because I didn't schedule the call.
I hated that. When I was buying real estate, it's an endless stream of of warnings to not give away all your money to scammers, interleaved with a stream of messages from the bank, brokerage, and escrow company that look and act exactly the way scammers behave. No security in the phone based transactions. No challenge-response. Constant handoffs to new associates and affiliates.
They don't care about security at all; they just want to be able to say "we warned you" if you get robbed.
This is so true! It's absolutely mind-blowing how a fraud warning can be immediately followed by an impromptu call from someone's assistant using a cellphone.
This is also more broadly true of the consumer lending industry. One of the things that totally boggles my mind is that consumer loans are bought and sold, and then a consumer just receives a random letter one day: "hey, start sending your payments to me now!" How on earth is the poor consumer to know that the random person who is demanding money actually holds the note? And it's not like the student loan or the auto loan or the mortgage loan originator actually has a phone number one can call where someone actually reliably will answer the phone and will actually know whether the note was sold or not (have you tried to get a student loan servicer on the phone?)...
I think probably the only solution for that industry is to legislate rational security practices at them.
