Pretexting… hmmm…what could they mean?
Just a silly term for social engineering.
Pretexting…sounds like ghettospeak to me. “Yo, look all dem pretexters gettin they pretext on.”
Either that or someone with extraordinarily bad elocution. “We’re just pretexting the poor people!”
So, “pretexting” is the fancy new word for identity theft, is it?
No cites, but I’m sure I’ve seen that verb elsewhere recently in similar contexts but pertaining to other companies. A legitimate noun "pretext " has been turned into a verb. I’m not saying it was appropriate to turn it into a verb, but at least somebody didn’t randomly throw together some syllables that sounded good. “Identity theft” isn’t a good synonym for it because “pretexting” is just one way to perform identity theft. I guess “Social Engineering” is the best synonym already in common use.
I thought it was going to be the new word for “ringing someone on the phone” i.e. to warn him that you’re about to send a text. I’ve seen people doing this.
I thought it was the other way round. Text them first to tell them to answer when you call.
I really thought this was what the thread was going to be about in the first place.
I thought it was what Popeye promised to do for Olive.
“Pretexting” is a common tactic among private investigators. I’ve heard the term for many years.
Ah, so “pretexting” = “lying”. Pretexter, pretexter, pants on fire.
Yes.
Heh… earlier today I was in the parking lot of a run-down grocery store in a not-so-nice part of town and I heard a young man shouting into a cell phone: “I gotta get me some fucking liability man! I need that fucking liability…”
Some combination of the environment, the demeanor of the man, and the term I’m so used to hearing/reading in conjunction with fancy legalese made that particularly funny to me.
so did I
I’d call it ‘fraud’. If it isn’t illegal, it should be.
Which is what fascinates me about this, that private detectives can lie to the phone company to get private data, and it’s considered to be run of the mill detective work, so much so they even have jargon for it., and the attitude from
the company and the PI’s seems to be “So what? It’s pretexting”.
In addition to being a term used by investigators, the term is used by the FTC to describe the portion of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act dealing with similar practices:
http://www.ftc.gov/privacy/privacyinitiatives/pretexting.html
The old-fashioned term was “wire fraud”.
Sailboat
Pretexting is the condition of any woman over the age of puberty who owns a mobile phone and thus may potentially text someone at any moment.
Heh, I got an email from a friend yesterday saying "Mark Hurd’s company is catching hell for this “pretexting scandal.” I said “Mark Hurd, I haven’t seen him since college (fraternity brother). Who’s he work for?” Reply: “He’s president and CEO of HP.” Oh.
I’m really hoping his name stays out of the news. This is gettin’ ugly.