Nice

[danaf]

Creditors are calling my mother in laws place. I told her about the bk so no biggy. I just wonder how in the hell they connected me with her????? I've never put her number on anything and we don't even live in the same city.

[unsecured]

Amen...we went to visit on a rare day and somebody called??? how the heck did they know??? she has an unlisted number even???

[GoingDown]

I've even had collectors call my relatives in far away states like Oregon. I never gave anyone that information, but they have software programs that allow them to find relatives' phone numbers.

My relatives were not surprised and were very rude and hostile to the debt collector. And they stopped calling them after that.

You could also send the collector a cease and desist from any communication letter and in most cases, they will stop calling.

[helpless]

I have had calls here for my mother in law. I just say that no one lives here by that name.

[JoeBlow]

They can legally look at your phone call record if you have a land-line phone. You are paying for phone service that is spying on you. Dump the landline and get a cell phone. They can't track cell phone call (best yet, get a prepaid cell phone). What ever you do don't call your work from your landline or they will know where you work.

Creditors are calling my mother in laws place. I told her about the bk so no biggy. I just wonder how in the hell they connected me with her????? I've never put her number on anything and we don't even live in the same city.

[lrprn]

They can't track cell phone call (best yet, get a prepaid cell phone).

Sorry to bust your bubble, but cell phones can be tracked as easily as landline phones.

If you want to get even more paranoid , check these stories out about how easy it is for personal information to be bought and sold without your knowledge -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701862.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

And let's not forget websites like these that help uncover personal information about anyone who wants it and is willing to pay -

http://www.abika.com/Reports/TracePhoneCalls.htm

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/08/online-service-claim.html

Let's face it...if someone wants to find you and thinks it's worth the cost, there are very few of us skilled enough or wealthy enough to avoid a determined creditor over many years if the debt is big enough.

[HHM]

But frankly, CA's do not want to PAY to get info.

Although it may be "possible", the occurrence of such a breach is far rarer than most conspiracy nuts would have you think. After all, all methods to obtain such call records are illegal.

I am not naive, but understand that collections is a business and hence risk adverse and cost adverse, they are looking for "easy" money and hence are not going to go out of their way to collect an account.

[JoeBlow]

Then definently get a prepaid phone and register with an alias. Good point!

Sorry to bust your bubble, but cell phones can be tracked as easily as landline phones.

If you want to get even more paranoid , check these stories out about how easy it is for personal information to be bought and sold without your knowledge -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070701862.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

And let's not forget websites like these that help uncover personal information about anyone who wants it and is willing to pay -

http://www.abika.com/Reports/TracePhoneCalls.htm

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/08/online-service-claim.html

Let's face it...if someone wants to find you and thinks it's worth the cost, there are very few of us skilled enough or wealthy enough to avoid a determined creditor over many years if the debt is big enough.

[JoeBlow]

How would you know this?

But frankly, CA's do not want to PAY to get info.

.

[EveryDayAdam]

How would you know this?

Most of the tracking done by collection agencies are done through publicly searchable records on their own, and by your credit report...

For example: When I moved to NC from PA, I cancelled my PA numbers and got NC numbers...completely unlisted. Calls were non-existent for about 3 months. Then I had to get a car loan because my lease was up. As soon as I applied for credit, my new employer's name, and my new address were listed on my credit report. About 2 weeks later, I got a call at work from a CA.

So I pulled my credit report, and sure enough: my new address and the name of my employer were listed. What they had done was search for public phone numbers of companies with the same name near my new address...in most cases (unless you work at McD's or something like that), it would give them the number to where you work. Then they just start asking for you by name.

If my address changed, but my phone number wasn't listed, they might search the white pages for any phone numbers listed with my new address and call those.

They can have their computers search public records to find your mother's, father's, or spouse's name and then search the white pages in your area for anyone by those names...A CA got my father's phone number, despite the fact that I have NEVER listed my father's name on ANY application for ANYTHING ever in my life, and i've never lived at my father's address or used my father's address for anything.

If you move, and file a forwarding address with the post office, that info gets put in to a public record that the collection agencies can search. This will give them your new address, where they can then search the white pages in that area for phone numbers, get the number of the local office for your employer listed on your credit report and try to reach you there.

They might pull your CHEX systems report (like a credit report but for if you bounced checks), and see if you applied for any bank accounts or bounced any checks and where you did that...then start search and calling people with your name in those areas.

ALL of this is done with freely available public record information, your credit reports, and a computer...all of which are pretty minimal in costs...The public info is free to get, they probably have deals with the credit bureaus to run all the reports they want for a moderate flat monthly fee, and once they program the computer, it just sits there and crunches numbers for a $1/day in electricity...When it finds someone, i'm sure it spits out a nice report.

As far as them having access to your phone records, that is 110 kinds of illegal. The Dept of Justice and FBI recently got in to a lot of trouble for the same exact thing...some dinky little CA isn't going to get it either. You can make life pretty difficult for most of the CA's to find you without having to wear a tinfoil hat...just follow some basic privacy guidelines. But as was mentioned before, if it was worth enough money to someone to find you, they probably will unless you live completely off the grid.

[JoeBlow]

...A CA got my father's phone number, despite the fact that I have NEVER listed my father's name on ANY application for ANYTHING ever in my life, and i've never lived at my father's address or used my father's address for anything..

Did you call your father from your landline phone?

[EveryDayAdam]

Did you call your father from your landline phone?

Nope...Me & my dad only call eachother on our cell phones...They called his home landline number, which I don't even have and he never uses.

Trust me when I say that they can't just search your phone records...the FBI and AT&T are in a bunch of hot water and a lawsuit because AT&T was giving the FBI unrestricted access to their lines, and that was only because of the Patriot Act and the "war on terror". no telephone company is going to give unrestricted access to search call records to (relatively) small beans debt collection agency...and even if they did, the cost to the collection agency of that connection would be staggeringly expensive.

The only time a 3rd party can get the phone records is if something illegal happened, and a judge signs a warrant... and that will only happen if you have criminal charges filed, or there is probable cause for potential criminal charges...All of which can only be done by a District Attorney or a law enforcement agency and a warrant still must be signed by a judge...If this somehow did happen to come around from a collection agency, it wouldn't be until after they have a judgement, and then they'd have to pay a lawyer a bunch of cash to find you...it'd cost them well over $1000 to execute your call details...which isn't really worth it, just to find the phone number of someone who could possibly, maybe, kind-of-sort-of know to maybe find you.

Take off your tinfoil hat :-D

[sisterfunkhaus]

Well, I had creditors call my sister-in-law's in-laws!! These aren't people who are even related to me. I don't even know how they found out their last name!!! When I used to give my SIL's number out, it was before she was married and she lived somewhere else!!! I don't even call these people. I have only met them twice.