“Did you sell my phone number to a scammer?!” No, but your phone company probably did!

“Did you sell my phone number to a scammer?!” No, but your phone company probably did!

Q –

Angela,

I got a call on my home phone from someone at (name removed). Lots of noise in the background; spoke with a foreign accent. He knew my first name, and said he was interested in promoting my books. From what I’ve read on the Internet, it’s a scam.

How did he know all three: my name, my home phone number, and the name of my publisher? The only time I have given out my home phone number is when I signed the publishing contract.

L.


A –

We do not, nor have we ever, sold/given our authors’ or writers’ contact info. to anyone. Period.

Anyone can find self-published authors on Amazon by searching for a specific print on demand publisher, and then finding their books. They then search for the author’s name in a search engine to find the author’s contact info. It’s very simple.

Within seconds, I found your name, phone number, the names of your relatives, and more on nuwber.com.

Your phone company (AT&T) may have sold your info. to them as it says “AT&T landline.”

That’s just a free tool on the Internet. Professional marketers have other resources they use to find the contact info. for folks. And, with your address available at the sites above, they can even see a picture of your house on Google maps.

Angela

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One Response to "“Did you sell my phone number to a scammer?!” No, but your phone company probably did!"

  1. Sarah Bates  October 9, 2017 at 3:55 pm

    I got one of those calls from a publishing company that also had a “PR firm” wanting to help me sell books. I told the caller to send me a proposal and a case history. What arrived was a document with a huge fee (over $2,600) and a proposal with typos! I responded that I could not manage a fee that high, but more importantly, a proposal with typographic errors.