Huh?
The calls often include some fluff like...
"We know you are excited about going to college and getting your degree! Please call us back as soon as possible so that we can help you and make your school experience easier."
Huh?
These sales folks are fairly intense, as phone marketers are want to be, and persistent to the point of being obnoxious and rude. Several times a day, from several different call centers, I would get these solicitation calls telling me that I had requested the student loan information from them, craftily getting around the DO NOT CALL list rules allowing folks to break the do not call barrier if information is sought out by the call recipient. Argh!
In fact, quite often the Alec Baldwin/Glengarry Glenn Ross-esque closers are shooting for the steak knives and won't take no for an answer and start to ridicule me - "Hey! You are never gonna get anywhere without your college degree! You should listen to what I have to say!!"
Me: "Umm - ok chuckles - except you AREN'T LISTENING TO ME! I ALREADY HAVE A DEGREE and don't want another! And if your final hard sell is to ridicule and belittle your marks, then you ought to take your own advice and get another degree - 'cause sales ain't your thing."
Finally, I called the police to see what I could do as this seemed almost like harassment, and got the equivalent of a virtual shrug across the phone wires. Thank you Alexandria's finest.
"Have they attempted to get money from you?" No.
"Have you given them your personal information or SSN?" No.
"Then you really can't do much about it since they claim to have gotten your information online from your request. Check your credit report and make sure no one is actually taking the loan out in your name."
*sigh* Thanks, I think...
Checked our credit report and all was fine. Finally, our desperate solution was to unplug the answering machine for a month. We figured if they didn't get a live response, or answering machine, then they'd stop calling. And it worked. Somewhat. Steve's job search earlier this Summer nixed that strategy and the phone was plugged back in, much to my chagrin.
Just this week, the calls have begun again - this time for life insurance requests for information.
Huh?
I was finally able to get a person who could/would tell me where he got the information. The Kindly Eric at Bankers Life Insurance took pity on me and told me that "I had requested the insurance quotes from insureme.com at 7:14 am on 8/24."
I informed him that I didn't, in fact I was in the process of oversleeping at that time and had not been on insureme.com, nor had I ever been on insureme.com. The Kindly Eric was as puzzled as I was.
He read off the information that he had... my actual name (spelled correctly, which can be hard to do) ... my actual phone... my actual address... my age, incorrectly listed, as 22 years old (thanks fraudster!), requesting $150k in insurance.
Huh?
Now - my question is... Who (but me) would be entering my data into ANY site at 7:14 in the morning? To what purpose? Is it puckish harassment by some 15 year old programmer in the Philippines who made a webot to do this and populated it with my stolen information from some hijacked data source? Is someone trying to really steal my information - and how would they do this through a sales call center? Or is the goal just to annoy me with prank calls from unsuspecting sales people who have been fed false sales leads? I don't get it.
I finally called the FTC to register a complaint since this time I actually had some data as to where this sales call originated. Kindly FTC Lady registering complaints was all business, asking questions off a checklist and entering the data in some monstrous database, I am sure, lost in the bowels of some data storage facility in Rosslyn or Tyson's Corner. She thanked me for calling and gave me a claim number and prepared to hang up.
Me: WAIT! What do I do now? What is the next step? How should I deal with folks who can't tell me where they got the information? Have you heard of this before? How do I stop them? Why are they doing this? ..... hello?
Kindly FTC Lady: Once again... virtual shrug. "There is nothing you can do but register the complaint. I am sorry and I understand your frustration."
Me: WHAT? I feel so helpless! That is it? What do you do with the complaint that I filed?
Kindly FTC Lady: "We track trends and if we see something happening with a verifiable trend, then we try to act on it."
Me: Seriously? That's it? I just keep calling you back and reporting my various harassment events? There is nothing I can do but shut off my phone?
Kindly FTC Lady: "Frankly - I am sorry to say, yes. That is all you can do. That and call the police and check your credit report regularly."
Now is my turn for the shrug. So instead, I turn to the geeks in my electronic world to help me out - what is the answer? Why is this happening? Have you heard of it before? And how do I make it stop? Or is it time to shrug and unplug the phone again?
*sigh*
By the way - if anyone DOES need life insurance or student loans - let me know and I'd be happy to pass on your information. It seems the entire loan sales community has my number.
Update: Just found out that the information is being populated, at least at two of the groups, from an IP address of a known hacker/spammer from the Ukraine. 24.126.122.242 Some jerk with an email address of electronikapraha@gmail.com. Think I may use that email address from now on when filling out surveys online. Hmmm.
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