This came across my desk the other day... actually, it appeared on my local site on Nextdoor.com. A woman posted the following:
Instead of contacting the Census Bureau (which has a pretty easy-to-remember web address -- www.census.gov) to ask questions, the woman got all paranoid and went to a commercial website looking for "help." There she found an article that said there's a "census scam," written by a freelancer (with no background in security) who based her description of said "scam" on a single newspaper article -- about a door-to-door "surveyor."
I went looking for such a "legit-looking survey" and found one pretty quickly: it's the Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey form, which does indeed contain a question about what time you leave for work (question 33) -- although it doesn't ask what time you're gone: instead it asks how long it takes to get to work.
Now I can believe that someone might be a little leery of a stranger showing up at your door claiming to be a census taker. I, too, would probably contact the Census Bureau to verify his or her credentials. But then I'm not stupid enough to think that the bureau is going to ask for my SSN or the password to my online banking account, much less identify itself as a Nigerian prince
Here's where my neighbor (we'll call her Jane) got lost: it's something called critical thinking. the questions she should have asked herself before getting paranoid are ones like
copyright © 2017 scmrak
"We received a legit looking survey in the mail supposedly from the Census Bureau. Many personal questions were on it, some like the Census bureau would ask, but we noticed that it asked what time you leave for work and how long it takes you to get home. When we had not filled it out and returned it someone called and pressured us to answer it over the phone. We refused and he said he would be calling back. After that, I did a bit of research. According to consumeraffairs.com, the census bureau would NOT ask when you leave for work and when you return."
Instead of contacting the Census Bureau (which has a pretty easy-to-remember web address -- www.census.gov) to ask questions, the woman got all paranoid and went to a commercial website looking for "help." There she found an article that said there's a "census scam," written by a freelancer (with no background in security) who based her description of said "scam" on a single newspaper article -- about a door-to-door "surveyor."
I went looking for such a "legit-looking survey" and found one pretty quickly: it's the Census Bureau's 2017 American Community Survey form, which does indeed contain a question about what time you leave for work (question 33) -- although it doesn't ask what time you're gone: instead it asks how long it takes to get to work.
Now I can believe that someone might be a little leery of a stranger showing up at your door claiming to be a census taker. I, too, would probably contact the Census Bureau to verify his or her credentials. But then I'm not stupid enough to think that the bureau is going to ask for my SSN or the password to my online banking account, much less identify itself as a Nigerian prince
Here's where my neighbor (we'll call her Jane) got lost: it's something called critical thinking. the questions she should have asked herself before getting paranoid are ones like
- Does this form really ask, "What time do you get home"? (probably not)
- What would someone hope to gain by asking this information of random homeowners?
- Does Jane really think a wannabe burglar would put together a multiple-page questionnaire, rent a post office box in a distant city, set up a website, and pay for a toll-free number so he -can find out when Jane's not home?
- When the person called on the telephone, did he really "pressure" her? And what makes Jane think some criminal would go to the trouble of follow-up phone calls?
| Yeah, sure: some shifty character who won't look me in the eye shows up at my door and starts asking how much money I have in the bank and whether I have a gun safe, I get paranoid. But this? This reaction is exactly what I expect of someone who doesn't exercise critical thinking. Your critical thinking process is no different from a muscle: if you don't exercise it, it gets flabby -- and Jane's looks like a pretty flabby brain. | 
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