QUOTE
Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information.[1] While similar to a confidence trick or simple fraud, the term typically applies to trickery for information gathering or computer system access and in most cases the attacker never comes face-to-face with the victim.
Anyone here ever done some reading on Social Engineering? It's very interesting, and quite useful to those studying certain aspects of security. I haven't routinely practiced it myself, but there are very harmless (yet some very harmful) forms of social engineering done everyday. It's something anyone can do, at any time, and it's wiser to be aware of it for your own safety. Most of us have unknowingly used it at least once in our lives.
Kevin Mitnick wrote a book on this called The Art of Deception. I haven't found a better one on this topic yet.
Here's a short example, done solely to demonstrate:
Free pizza via social engineering
The biggest flaw in security is the human mind.