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What do I do if I Keep Getting Telemarketing Calls?
Telemarketers get your number from the same place websites do, mostly from data brokers such as Lexis Nexis, Experian, and Equifax. Sometimes they get your number directly from your cell phone carrier who also sells your data to third parties. It’s really important to opt-out everywhere you can. If your phone carrier has a website check there first to see if there is a way to opt-out of them sharing your information. If there isn’t one, call and see what you can do. Here the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) is doing some good by providing all citizens with a method of stopping marketing calls. The FTC’s website has an opt-out page that allows you to decide whether or not you want calls from telemarketers. Selecting opt-out on their website will alert telemarketers that you do not want calls. If they continue to call after the prescribed waiting period, can then report them and file a complaint. In the meantime, you can block numbers on your phone you know are telemarketing lines. This will help cut back on the calls until you can get the complaint resolved.
Other things you can do is answer the call and at the end, there is usually a message asking if you want to stop calls from a certain marketing group. You can designate your choice on the call and that will stop calls from that group. The problem is that you have to do this for each company. It’s better to use the opt-out option on the FTC as this is a blanket option and covers all telemarketers. There is an additional opt-out for unsolicited offers of credit and loans. This stops “pre-approved” offers from showing up on your doorstep every week. In some cases, these companies run a hard credit check on you which will negatively impact your credit score. So opting out is probably a good idea for most people.
Since most of the telemarketing calls these days are automated, teleprompted recordings, yelling at them won’t give you much satisfaction, but you could try anyway! The best way to avoid telemarketing calls is to opt-out, keep your data offline and don’t give out your number to anyone unless you know them and know what they will be using your number for. Often, despite our best efforts at keeping our information offline, sometimes it’s too late; various data miners and data harvesters have already gotten some of our personal information including your address, phone number or other info. As a result of all this data gathering, you might want to do a search and find out that your personal information has already ended up online. If you find your name and address are online, contact an internet removal service who can show you how to remove your information from the internet. They can also delete information and remove your address from the internet.