A mammoth undertaking

I booked a holiday recently for later in the year, just another holiday cottage, but through a company I’d not used before. I did it all online, and provided my mobile number.

A few days later I got a call to discuss my booking. All very well, until the caller asked me to confirm the first line of my address before she would go any further.

Hang on a minute. She called me, from a number I didn’t recognise, and which was not the same as the contact number on the holiday company’s website. And now she’s asking me to provide personal information over the phone? She could have been anyone. Next thing I bet she’d have been asking for my credit card details to “complete the booking”.

It was very probably a legitimate call from the holiday company. But on principle I simply don’t ever hand out personal details of any kind to people who call me out of the blue. I would always initiate the call, on a number that I trust. And what was worse was that she didn’t seem to see that there was a potential issue with her protocols.

There is so little data privacy these days that I’m probably fighting a losing battle. But it makes me very cross when companies that ought to know better act in an indistinguishable way from scammers.