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"A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls,
intrusion detection systems and encryption
and other security technologies,
 but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company,
 and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in,
then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted."
~ Kevin Mitnick

Before the birth of the Internet, security breaches involving social engineering were in full force via the telephone and fax machines.

One well-known ongoing scam has involved telephone con artists posing as company-approved vendors. They'll call various departments in organizations until they reach someone willing to cooperate by providing equipment serial numbers, allegedly for repair or supply-ordering purposes. The scammers will obtain the name of the person who provided them with the information and then send invoices to the company for phony supply or equipment repair orders with fingers crossed that no one will check and simply pay them. Another scam involves obtaining those serial numbers and employee's name again, shipping below-standard supplies "authorized" by the employee, and then sending an invoice, usually for a charge far above what the supplies are worth. These scams don't work in every case, but they work often enough to keep them going.