Pretexting is the practice of obtaining someone’s personal information under false pretenses, and it is against federal law. In addition to the Federal Trade Commission Act which generally prohibits pretexting for sensitive personal information, under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act passed in 1999, it is illegal for anyone to:
- use false, fictitious or fraudulent statements to obtain customer information from a financial institution or directly from a customer of a financial institution;
- use false, fictitious, fraudulent, forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents to obtain customer information from a financial institution or directly from a customer of a financial institution;
- ask another person to obtain someone’s customer information using false, fictitious or fraudulent statements or using false, fictitious, fraudulent, forged, counterfeit, lost, or stolen documents.
