There are many ways that people can be manipulated to disclose knowledge that can be used to jeopardize security. one of these ways is to call someone under the false pretense of being from the it department. this is known as hacking social engineering pretexting exploitation

I believe the answer is; pretexting

Pretexting is a form of social engineering that carried out by lying to another individual in order to obtain a privileged information from that individual. Other example of a pretexting would be when a person claiming to be a government worker in order to obtain your social security number.

pretty sure a is right