The act of exchanging a favor to gain a mutual advantage is known as reciprocation. This type of social engineering engagement may involve a casual and long-term business relationship. By exploiting the trust between business entities, someone could easily map their target to acquire any necessary information. For example, Bob is a professional hacker and wants to know about the physical security policy of the ABC company at its office building. After careful examination, he decides to develop a website, drawing the keen interest of two of their employees by selling antique pieces at cheap rates.

We assume that Bob already knows their personal information including the email addresses through social networks, internet forums, and so on. Out of the two employees, Alice begins to purchase stuff regularly and becomes the main target for Bob. Bob is now in a position where he could offer a special antique piece in exchange for the information he needs. Taking advantage of human psychological factors, he writes an email to Alice, and asks her to get the ABC company's physical security policy details, for which she would be entitled to a unique antique piece. Without noticing the business liability, she reveals this information to Bob. This proves that creating a fake situation, while strengthening the relationship by trading values, can be advantageous for social engineering.