How Telemarketers and Debt Collectors Obtain Your Mobile Phone Number

Landline usage is dropping by over 10 percent per year as more and more individuals are moving to the exclusive use of their mobile phones as their primary means of communication.  This means that your email signature, your business cards, your orders and other places you use your contact information can potentially fall into the hands of a telemarketer or other data providers, which will lead to potential telemarketing calls.  This unfortunately, is the way the world is moving and fast. 

Since its inception in 2004, over 200 million numbers have been registered with the National Do Not Call Registry. This means that the individuals associated with these numbers have an expectation of privacy. Yet, despite the registry, an estimated 150 million telemarketing calls are made each day in the United States, an estimated 20 percent, or 30 million, of which are potential violations of federal regulations.

In 1978, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act was put into effect to eliminate abusive practices in the collection of consumer and business debts. However, with the recent economic downturn, it seems some of these debt collection agencies can sometime overlook the regulations put in place to protect the consumer.

Reporting abusive debt collectors to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC ( News - Alert )) and registering your number on the Do Not Call Registry is a great way to protect yourself against telemarketers, but there are a number of other ways to ensure your number remains private.

Below are a number of ways that debt collectors and telemarketers obtain cell phone numbers both legitimately and illegitimately as well as eight recommendations of ways to protect and prevent your cell phone number from falling into the wrong hands.

If an attorney is representing you about the debt, the debt collector must contact the attorney, rather than you. If you don’t have an attorney, a collector may contact other people – but only to find out your address, your home phone number, and where you work. Collectors usually are prohibited from contacting third parties more than once. Other than to obtain this location information about you, a debt collector generally is not permitted to discuss your debt with anyone other than you, your spouse, or your attorney.  These types of activities are covered under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act mentioned above.

It sounds terrible, but one of the easiest ways to find someone who does not want to be found is to find out where their kids are in school.  Once they’ve discovered where your kids are in school, these debt collectors may attempt to extract information from your kids, about where you live, work and so on. Don’t allow your kids to speak to strangers, but reinforce the idea that if anyone asks about mom or dad, they should refuse to answer, or say they don’t know.

One way or another, debt collectors sometimes manage to access your medical records, usually by committing fraud, and lying to your doctor or hospital to access your history.  Oftentimes, they will use this information as a means to extract information from you, or your loved ones. This approach tends to work well for debt collectors, since they can claim, when speaking to your family or friends, that they cannot reveal the reason. Your loved ones are also likely to be more concerned, and reveal information they would not normally.

Using a post office box as your mailing address doesn't deter a collection agency. For a small fee, the post office will provide a box holder's street address if it's available.  Once a TM has your street address, either a simple Google search, Facebook search or other searches may turn up the individual’s cell phone number.

With hundreds of millions of people using social media sites to share themselves with friends they inadvertently fall into the false sense of safety and security.  Don’t post personal details and make sure your FaceBook andMySpace ( News - Alert )pages are set to private, and that only people you know can view your information. Never include your address or phone number on those types of pages, and set up a separate email account.

Also, be mindful of the pictures that you may post to these sites. Sometimes, those pictures can give away your location. Additionally, with the advent of location tracking, some pictures actually contain the coordinates of where the picture was taken which might give away your individual location.

If you sign up for any online offers or give your details to any sites, make sure they will be secure, and not divulged to anyone else, or avoid it altogether. It’s becoming easier and easier to find people thanks to the Internet, and that one online offer could lead you to a world of trouble including Identify Theft and/or telemarketing calls.  It was reported recently that many debt collectors’ first attempt to find people and information is through the traditional social sites such as MySpace and Facebook.  Innocent information about your work, travels, and social activities reveal lots of information about your location giving debt collectors and telemarketers ways of to contact you.

Probably the most traditional way for telemarketers to get your data is to simply purchase it from a third party data provider.  There are hundreds of data providers that have a wide array of data on individuals.  This data is accumulated through many sources such as warranty cards that are sent in by individuals, purchases made on-line, deliveries by various services and by simply searching online in order to build a more lucrative data file to sell.  Some additional examples are these:

Inadvertent disclosure - If you sign up for a contest or drawing, a phone number is usually requested. Such give-away promotions may have less to do with gifts than they do with obtaining your number for sales pitches. If you have your phone number printed on your checks, your name, address and phone number can easily be copied and entered into computerized mailing/phone lists.

Automatic dialing devices are able to determine all possible phone number combinations, even unlisted numbers, and dial them much more rapidly than any person can.

"800", "888", and "900" numbers are another way for telemarketers to obtain your phone number. When you call these numbers, your phone number may be captured with a system called "Automatic Number Identification" or ANI. ANI uses equipment that automatically identifies and stores the number from which you are dialing. By matching your phone number with other computerized lists and street address directories, your name and address can often be discovered and added to marketers' databases. Not only will the company that captured your number be able to use it, they may sell it to other marketers.

Credit Requests - Whenever you apply for credit, even for something as small as household appliances, you give out personal information. Often, consumers are lured into signing up for these credit cards, especially at department stores, by the offer of interest-free financing with immediate spending power. Many times, third-party organizations actually bear the cost of financing your purchases, just to get their hands on your personal information. They can then sell, and resell, your name, address, phone number and spending history to others. 

Donations  - If you contribute to charitable organizations, obtaining your name can far outweigh your donation in value. Many times, charities hire third-party telemarketing companies to collect funds on their behalf. The telemarketers keep a percentage of whatever they collect, turning over the rest of your donation to the charity. However, the telemarketers also keep you personal information, from which they can profit exponentially as they sell and resell it to other telemarketing companies.

Requests for Information – When you call, email or otherwise ask for more information on a product or service, you’ve opened the door for them to call you to sell you something.

Things you should do:

--Register your cell phone number on the National Do Not Call (DNC) list.  We estimate that over 50 percent of mobile phone numbers are NOT registered on the DNC.

--Limit where you provide your cell phone number.  If you have a landline use that number for deliveries and purchases but use the forwarding function so that your landline forwards your calls to your cell. 

--Read the fine print on disclosures to inform you as to where your personal information is going.  Be aware of the typical “box” to check that is required by on-line companies to offer you the capability to NOT share your personal information. You can also scan these disclosures for words such as “privacy”, “personal data”, “third parties or affiliates” and “security” as these are generally where the disclosure may contain what they are going to do with your personal data.

--Don’t just go enter sweepstakes, contests and drawings for that “special” prize without understanding where your information is going.

--Be cautiously charitable – when making a donation to anyone, make sure you ask to be excluded from any telemarketing activities in the future.

--All telemarketers and companies that use telemarketers must manage an internal DNC list.  Ask to be put on the internal DNC.  This applies even when you have a relationship with that business.  They may still call you about your account, but not to sell you anything.

--Be smart about giving any personal information out, ask, ask and ask again about where your information is going, who has access to it and why.  Always, opt-out of any future campaigns.

--Download PrivacyStar on yourBlackBerry ( News - Alert )or Android to block and report these unwanted telemarketing calls.  It is easy to use, simple to install and ensures that your rights are being protected as best as can be done!

About this Author: Jeff Stalnaker, CEO of First Orion, the makers of PrivacyStar, a mobile app that can block any number and captures all call information, making it easy for users to file Do Not Call complaints.

Mr. Stalnaker was formerly the Division President of the financial services division atAcxiom ( News - Alert )Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM), a leading provider of integrated marketing services to the global 1000. In 2001, Mr. Stalnaker was appointed Acxiom’s Chief Financial Officer and prior to that appointment held a variety of financial/accounting positions throughout the company leading acquisitions valued in excess of $800 million.

Prior to joining Acxiom, Mr. Stalnaker was a senior analyst with the Arkansas Public Service Commission responsible for recommendations and testifying before the Commission on a variety of Federal and State public utility issues, including the telecommunications industry. For more information on First Orion and PrivacyStar visit www.privacystar.com .

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