Bill D, you remind me of another set of calls I was receiving for a while. They were supposedly from a law firm in New York (I pieced that together via one of those google searches--put in the number and you find a place where other people report their experiences with the number). The woman insisted that there was someone she knew was related to me and "we can tell by your social security number." I wasn't going to give her my number for comparison purposes, and I knew perfectly well they couldn't tell a thing about this person who isn't related by SS#s, but I figured out who all she was going to try to call for this bogus connection, and she had my ex-husband on the list. I told her she was wasting her time with all of us.

When the next call came it was more abrupt, the person was clearly someone from a collection agency and still insisting that I was related to this person, same one as named before. And I got a couple more calls about that person, so clearly they recycle their information through the callers hoping to get lucky, never discarding any wrong information.

Prior to the federal "do not call" list legislation, individuals could actually charge callers once they'd been warned off after calling the first time. Some of the bills were pretty hefty, and those companies were compelled to pay. But the feds took that away when they passed the national legislation. You know darned well someone was lobbying for that little bit of the bill, to cut their costs down. The fine is probably a lot less than the individual bills they were facing.

SRS