Odd call- message for my neighbor?

[4nana]

Actually my Mom and I have had this happen also. My strange caller politely asked me to put a note on my new neighbors house, to pls call them at a particular number. Altho I thought it was weird, sounded urgent, so I did it. My Mom's caller was an emergency call for her neighbor and she had to go to his house and tell him to call such and such. When she asked caller 'how he knew she was a neighbor', he said 'he found it on the web'.

Legal or not, from my understanding, anyone who is listed in the phone book is on the web. It is very easy, for instance, MSN white pages. Put the name and address in and it will bring up the searched party. You can then pull up directions to their house and all the names of all their neighbors. I innocently discovered this while researching our family tree. Used in the wrong manner, could be very scary indeed!

edcrbnsoul, thank you for that information.

 

[aprilgail2]

I used to get them all the time for the people next door to me...was always bill collectors from all different places...I finally just started letting the answering machine pick up and screening my calls. Luckily they moved, but not long after they moved I had the police knocking on my door asking if I knew where they went, they had a warrent for one of them....

 

[kilee]

We get calls all the time for the person who must of had our number before us (we've only had this particular number for a few months). I've never gotten them on my neighboors though. The 3 houses directly across the street from us all foreclosed in one year- so I'm positive we had a few "deadbeats".

 

[s&k'smom]

I worked with a very nice woman who had been a bill collector and the company she was working for had them take training classes on bill collecting. They do whatever they can to the legal limit.

 

[delilah]

We also had people calling for one of our numbers, for years it seemed.
As a matter of fact, we changed one of our numbers, it became so harrassing to us. The caller refused to believe that they didn't have the correct number, and we didn't even know the person they were trying to reach. It is funny, though. If I google my husband's name, they give a phone number that is no longer ours. (If you google my name, you get my office number and address--nice). We only have one number now--we had two lines because of our computer. My brother called the wrong number, trying to reach us--probable reached the poor fellow who is not only getting bill collectors for the previous person on the number, but our friends and family who try to get our number off the internet.

 

[Chicago526]

Legal or not, from my understanding, anyone who is listed in the phone book is on the web. It is very easy, for instance, MSN white pages. Put the name and address in and it will bring up the searched party. You can then pull up directions to their house and all the names of all their neighbors. I innocently discovered this while researching our family tree. Used in the wrong manner, could be very scary indeed!

And THIS is why I pay my phone company $2 a month to keep my number unpublished. Not just unlisted, but UNPUBLISHED. They cannot put my name and number in the phone book or on the internet, AND they can't sell my name and number to telemarketers, which before the Do Not Call List came into being, was a great way to reduce telemarketer calls (prior to the list, I only got about 3 telemarketer calls a week on average).