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The Kitchen Table

Think your cell phone number is secure? Think again!

16 years ago

If you think your cell phone number is safe from marketers think again. It may have already been published on the internet along with 90 million others.

See the latest at: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22956815

"Intelius" may have posted your number along with the whole directory for a few days before pulling it.

Jim

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Comments (6)

lilliepad
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
This is not true.Check it on SNOPES.I couldn't find the URL you posted.

Here is a link that might be useful: Cell Phones and marketers
bettyswwa
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
The URL worked for me. Thank goodness Intelius decided to stop the service.
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I don't have a phone number, just go to the donotcall.gov and register your cell numbers. This is a true story -- look at this website, they are the people who started it: intelius.com They have your cell number if you use it for any business, etc.
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Just to clarify: The entire value for your land, let alone your house, is what someone will pay for it. For insurance valuation you can look at replacement cost because it's about what you've lost that you can buy again at a store. As soon as you start using your stuff its individual market value (that is, what you could sell it on Craig's List for) goes down. That's why insurance for replacement value costs so much more than insurance for real value. The concept, if you sue someone for destroying your stuff, is to make you whole for what it's worth at the time it's destroyed. You might be able to argue that the durability of granite is such that it doesn't depreciate, but your appliances sure do! That's why people want to be insured to be able to replace what they lost as if it were new. No one wants to replace a fridge that was new out of the box two years ago with a two year old one on Craig's List that's been in someone else's house holding someone else's food, even though, technically, you already used up the first two years' worth of of value, and only lost a two year old, used fridge. For security against your loan, you're looking at market sale value only. The appraisal is what someone who really understands the market thinks you can reasonably get for it. It's more art than science, and the only way to know for sure is to actually sell. Since, of course, you don't want to sell, the trick might be to find an independent appraiser who thinks that your opinion about jalousies being not charming matches that of potential buyers for your house, and that seeing that they're gone will induce them to pay more for your place. The disintegrating and dangerous stuff you mentioned doesn't necessarily mean someone will pay more for the exact same house with those things fixed. It may be that there's a higher demand for a fixer "that we can put our own personalities into" than a place that's been fixed up already. Maybe there are 10 houses on the market with similar lots, houses, etc., 2 like your was, 5 with less destruction, but still ugly old tiles and jalousies, and 3 like yours improved with nice windows and no maintenance issues. If the ones like yours are priced at 20-30% more, do the buyers just choose the 5 in the middle? Do they actually pay less for the two at the bottom? Or does it turn out that they all sell for within $5K of each other? That's what the appraisers check. One of the two at the bottom might be at the top of that range, too, because it has a really cool tree, and one of the best three might go for the least because no one likes the granite in the kitchen. And that's how they get an average price for what your house is worth based on everything remotely like it, not just the ones that have had the maintenance and upgrades. Why do they sell the loans that way? So you'll buy them!!! They're into it for making money off of you, not to do you a favor. Banks are remarkably cold blooded institutions, and credit unions only seem nicer. Underneath they're just as cold blooded.
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The wired phone is the probably one of the most reliable things in my neck of the wood. We recently switched to cable phone from the copper wire phone line through the phone company. The reliability of the cable phone is not nearly as good for us. The cell connection at my house is abysmal, and this is after having tried multiple companies. I have my kitchen phone at the desk near the kitchen but not in the kitchen. So it is easily reached from the central part of the house but not near the work surface. I have CAT5 to every room in my house. When we remodeled our house prior to wireless, this was a must. Even with the wireless, I like having the redundancy. I had them install the CAT 5 plug on the island as well as every where else I can think of.
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western_pa_luann
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
"This is not true.Check it on SNOPES."

Actually, it IS true that Intelius posted a cell phone directory on its website.
Verizon threatened to sue, and at least the Verizon numbers were pulled.

The story was in the papers and on the news yesterday and today.....
lilliepad
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Sorry,as I said I couldn't read the original link so I went to Snopes and found the link I posted.It is my understanding though that all one has to do in order to keep marketers from calling is register with the "Do Not Call" registry.
In the Snopes information it states that the list compiled by Intelius was compiled from a number of public sources,not from information provided by wireless providers,so therefore may not be reliably accurate.
Pooh Bear
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
I saw this on CNN last week. It is true.
They reported that there is no way to remove
your number at this time. The information
was gathered from a bunch of public resources.
This was reported early last week.
Some of it may have changed since then.

Pooh Bear
lindasewandsew
16 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
Hi, I'm one of those people who HATES phone solicitors, but actually had a job doing it more years ago than I care to remember. Back then, we called numbers in sequence. The boss picked a prefix from the area and we 'cold called' every number from 0001 to 9999, then started on the next prefix.

After many years passed, I got tired of people calling, and found it hard to be short with them, even though they were a waste of my time. I heard Clark Howard's radio show about every money con job, including phone solicitors. He said on a show that when someone calls you, if you tell them clearly, "Take my number off your list, and never call me again", that they had to remove you from the list. If they did call you again and you could show that they did, you could take them to small claims court and win a couple of thousand dollars. That seemed to work. As soon as I recognized a solicitor, I stopped them and repeated that mantra. We got less and less calls.

Another thing that's important is to not give your phone number to anyone unless YOU decide they need it. Assume that anyone who gets your number will call it and try to sell you something, AND sell it to anyone who will pay for it. When we purchased an appliance at a major retailer and were told it would come in a few days later, they wanted all our info. When we refused to give them our number, they really didn't like it. Of course, they wanted the number to hound us to buy an extended warranty. Not giving your number out prevents untold numbers of callers from getting it. Don't let your kids give out your info at the mall or online for any reason.

We never signed up for a 'do not call' list. This list can be purchased by almost anyone for a nominal fee. Remember, if you need to know who not to call, you need those numbers. If I needed 'hot' phone numbers, this is the first place I'd get them, knowing that they're current, and the odds of getting in trouble for calling them are on my side. There is no magic to cell phone numbers. I hear people in public answer their phones and say, you know this is a cell phone, as if that makes any difference to the person calling.

Do sign the privacy forms at your banking institutions so they're not allowed to sell your information. That should stay in house.

I'm sure that sometimes, major companies leak phone numbers and other info, but in this case, many more calls are received as a result of our own actions than from other's leaks. We turned our land line phone off over a year ago, which we were receiving NO soliciting on and don't get any on our cell phones. We got two calls on our cell phones that were a result of our car being repaired by two different repair places. One was a warranty repair at a dealer. When sales people call you, they know the longer you're on the phone, the more likely they'll get the sale. The sooner you stop them, the better. Repeat after me, TAKE MY NUMBER OFF YOUR LIST AND NEVER CALL ME AGAIN. It gets easier every time you do it. It works. Give the 555-5555 number to those who say they need your number, but you know they don't. Linda

Here is a link that might be useful: Clark Howard-Money Guy Extrordinaire

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