Just a day after I got a new landline phone connection at my new apartment a few days ago, I started to get telemarketing calls. (Yes, I also signed up immediately on the (United States) national no-call list.) They were using my name – “Is Mister or Mrs. [my last name] home?” – so it certainly wasn’t war-dialing.
The only thing I can think of is that AT&T is selling fresh phone numbers to telemarketers. Is that really the case?
Yes, probably.
I know that you can buy a full list of phone numbers (basically the phone book on CD) from the phone company. And not so long ago, my organization was offered a service where we could buy that CD, and get updates sent to us every 2 weeks. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see that the update option is available more frequently, even daily updates are probably available for a price.
The US Post Office offers a similar service for addresses, selling the entire list, and offering to sell frequent updates.