Documented social engineering incidents targeting the telecommunications sector, sourced and fact-checked.
A blogger paid $89.95 to an online data broker (CellTolls.com) to buy retired Gen. Wesley Clark's cell-phone call log obtained via carrier pretexting.
ConfirmedA Pakistani national in Sydney allegedly ran a callback-vishing scheme impersonating Optus and TPG Telecom support.
ConfirmedA scammer posing as GCI's CFO emailed payroll and, after the employee's initial pushback, persuaded them to hand over 2015 W-2s for every GCI.
ConfirmedBetween 2006 and 2008 the FTC sued 16 data-broker and private-investigation defendants who pretexted telecom carriers.
ConfirmedIn the first-ever prosecutions under the federal anti-pretexting statute Congress passed after the 2006 HP boardroom spying scandal.
ConfirmedA single SMS-phishing campaign lured employees to fake Okta login pages, harvested ~9,931 credentials and 5,441 MFA codes across 136 organizations.
Social Engineering Examples