What is pretexting?

Pretexting is defined as the action of building a planned scenario to convince a targeted victim to disclose data or make some action. It is more than only creating a trick; in some situations, it can be generating a completely new identity and then using that identity to manipulate the receipt of data.

Social engineers can use pretexting to impersonate people in specific positions and roles that they never themselves have done. Pretexting is not a one-size-fits-all solution. A social engineer must improve many various pretexts over his or her career. All of them will have one thing in common: research. Good information gathering methods can create or break a good pretext. For example, simulating the perfect tech support rep is ineffective if your victim does not use external support.

Pretexting is also used in fields of life other than social engineering. Trades; public speaking; so-called fortune tellers; neurolinguistic programming (NLP) experts; and even professors, lawyers, therapists, and the like all have to use a form of pretexting. They all have to build a scenario where people are satisfied with revealing information they regularly would not. The difference in social engineers using pretexting and others are the purposes involved. A social engineer must live that persona for a time, not just play a part.