Lying to get what you want is a core part of social engineering, and this can come in many forms. Often, it aligns with one or more of the core principles of social engineering. In social engineering, these lies are often called hoaxes. One common hoax is to fake security alerts, creating a sense of urgency for the victim. These fake alerts often make use of trust and authority as well, because the alerts appear to come from real sources which instruct the victim to take the required action.

Another type of lie used in social engineering is pretexting, which is when a social engineer invents a false pretext, or reason, for why a victim should share information or carry out an action.

If a random person emailed you asking for sensitive information, you would probably ignore them. On other hand, if the person claimed to be the new point of contact for a contractor working with your organization, you might be fooled into revealing information to them.