Yesterday afternoon a door-to-door salesman came knock-knock-knocking. The kid was dressed in nice, conservative summer clothes (jean shorts, tucked in polo, baseball cap) with a clipboard in hand … probably twenty or so years old.
Unfortunately for me the wooden door was open so our friend could plainly see we were home. Morgan ran to the door to greet him; I followed closely behind. The guy greeted us with a big smile and introduced himself as “Seth from APX Security.” He then held up the badge hanging around his neck as if to say “See, that’s me.” Mentally I rolled my eyes. For years I had a badge hanging on my lanyard at work that said I was licensed to fly an X-Wing Fighter.
The first red flag … no wait, the first red was that he was selling security systems door-to-door. The second red flag was that the social engineering started right off the bat. I’m not an expert in detecting social engineering, but after attending a class by Kevin Mitnick I’d say I’m at least as good as the next guy.
“I suppose you know Roger, your neighbor. Well we just put in a system for him,” he said, still smiling.
“I make it a point not to know any of my neighbors,” I said back.
Things probably would have ended quickly if it weren’t for Susan, god bless her, who thinks both telemarketers and door-to-door salesmen are really humans and should be treated as such.
The questions continued, mostly about our current security system — and for a minute or two, I obliged him. He saw the security company sticker on our front window and commented on it. “Yup,” I said. Susan added, “we also have our own security engineer who lives here,” gesturing toward me.
“See these cameras?” I said, pointing to one of my cameras mounted near the porch. “They record everything, including this conversation, and send it across the internet to an off-site server.”
While the salesman eyed the camera, I continued.
“The home alarm is hooked both to a land line and a cell line. If the land line is cut, the cell phone notifies the security company. If the cell phone loses signal or detects it is being jammed, the land line contacts the security company.”
(I just made that up to see what he would say. He said nothing.)
He asked a couple more questions and after I made it clear we were good, we began to part ways. As he began to walk off he wheeled around and said, “oh, I didn’t catch your name.”
I held my hand out. “Mike,” I said.
“Nice to meet you, Mike,” he said. We both smiled, for different reasons, and parted ways for good.
Yes, of course I know Roger. There are still bits of him in my freezer.
(Okay, that has more to do with my personal method for dealing with door-to-door sales-beings, but still, it seems to end the sales pitch really quickly.)
“Things probably would have ended quickly if it weren’t for Susan, god bless her, who thinks both telemarketers and door-to-door salesmen are really humans and should be treated as such.”
I’ll never forget the time my wife let one of those water-softener salesmen into the house, against my expressed wishes. Then after two hours of non-stop hard sell tactics she decided she’d had enough, and went upstairs to read a book, awkwardly leaving me with this punk. He was out the door in 2 minutes after that.