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is somebody casing our house or am I being paranoid?

Started 3 years ago by nuni
Latest reply from datamuse

nuni
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For about the last week someone has been calling my house around 8am and then when I answer they hang up. First thought that comes to mind with all of the break-ins lately reported on WSB is that they are casing my house. Am I being paranoid or is this something I should really be worried about? Thoughts?

Posted 3 years ago #
JanS
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nuni...do you have caller ID? You can google the phone #, and google will usually tell you if it's a telemarketing #, and list complaints. Or you can use the *69 function...call them back, and see who answers.

Posted 3 years ago #
WSB
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So you actually have a land line tied to a directory listing with an address? In the long run, might be a good idea to at least get the address removed.

For what it's worth, I've never heard police mention that form of potential casing, nor has a report turned up in the inbox, and it would seem like plucking an address out of the book and trying to confirm vacancy this way would be more work, and more sophisticated work, than the common garden-variety burglar would put him/herself through -- BUT my mom's favorite saying was "better safe than sorry."

Posted 3 years ago #
JanS
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TR...I'm laughing here. I've had my landline and phone directory listing since 1974. It's definitely not a secret.I have put my number on the "do not call" lists, but..hey...they call anyway. I have caller ID..if I don't recognize the #, or if it's an out of area, I just ignore and delete.

Posted 3 years ago #
nuni
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Don't have caller ID and was thinking about *69'ing the number this morning but didn't do it. Next time I will though. We do have our number listed and I'm pretty sure it has our address in there too (how do I get that removed?). Just googled it and our address came up. The only reason I didn't think telemarketer right off the bat is because they call all the time (and like JanS, we are also on the do not call list) and I can tell when it's them because they don't answer right away. In this case it's just a click and dead air.

Posted 3 years ago #
celeste17
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Sounds like one of those computer calls that dial and wait for someone to pick up and tell them to hang on for a very important phone message. Only the message part isn't working. Especially since its at about the same time each day.

Posted 3 years ago #
Jiggers
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That's some good da kine you got there..lol

Posted 3 years ago #
Kevin
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Nuni,
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One thing that I do is to call back the number, and say something like "Hi, who is this?, well this is Kevin and someone called here from your number. I had been waiting for a call from my Dr. office (make up any one liner here) and thought this might be them.
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9 times out of 10 it is a wrong number. Once in awhile I will even engage them further - just to see if they squirm. "Oh, looks like you have an Eastern Washington number... how's the weather over there?" - "nice talking to you" - "take care"
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Celeste, I have worked for several companies that supply the call center industry with auto-dialers, aka "predictive dialers" Many times the machines will start dialing at a very fast pace, placing more calls than the call center has agents to handle. The machine dials you, but there is no agent available to take the call, so you end up with a hang up! These calls are called "dead air" calls and are technically ILLEGAL, but good luck proving it.
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Your comment about receiving the calls right around 8AM makes sense for the "dead air" call scenario because that is when the call centers flood their outbound lines with calls so there is no wasted time in the agents receiving their first calls of the day. The "predictive" part kicks in perhaps after 20 to 30 minutes of dialing.
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Different agents in a call center will have patterns of talk time by agent, so that is where the dialer will decide that agent Sue is just 10 seconds away from her average talk time end, so the next call is dialed with the intention of sending the call to Sue. It is NOT an exact science, but the better machines are quite good at it, once they have a little call history to work with.
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The capacity of these machines are amazing. It is quite common to see machines with 400 to 500 phone lines, and a call center staff with several hundred agents. And some really large call centers might have multiple machines. Most of these machines are capable of handling both outbound and inbound calls.

Posted 3 years ago #
CarolPB
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the phone company charges to NOT be listed. i think you can also just have the phone # without the address too. please look in the phone book for "call rejection". you can block a ph# from calling yours- *82?? maybe?

Posted 3 years ago #
homedk
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Although the phone company charges for non-listed numbers, I believe that having your address unlisted is free. We've done that & have also made our listing less descriptive by using initials rather than first names; it hopefully makes it a little more difficult for any "bad guys".

Our landline number is on the Do Not Call registry, but still receives quite a few robo-calls & solicitations anyway. We have tried to solve that problem by putting an answering machine on that line & having it field the calls most of the time. I'd recommend doing that, because then anyone calling you can't be sure if you are just screening your calls or if you are gone.

Posted 3 years ago #
nuni
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My husband called the phone company. Our line costs $12 bucks and caller ID costs $9.

Anyways, I think I'm going to go with it being just an automated dialer. Hubster said that we've received about 8 calls in the last couple of hours so maybe the telemarketers are just in full force.

Posted 3 years ago #
Sue
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My sister-in-law got around paying for an unlisted number by putting the directory listing in the name of her fictional roommate. When someone called for that person, she instantly knew they were telemarketers since the person they were calling didn't exist. The phone company didn't care whose name the listing was under as long as the bill name was legit.

Posted 3 years ago #
Traci
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This might be way off base, but a few months ago I started getting calls multiple times a day sometimes really late at night. Usually they just hung up, and sometimes they'd ask really strange questions like where I was, etc and usually hung up on me. I started ignoring the calls from that number.

The kept calling and calling and finally I was like "who ARE you people?" And they said it was confidential info but then started asking weird questions about one of my college friends and if I could get HER to call them. It was SO WEIRD. After I basically flipped out to them they stopped calling.

I googled the phone number and a ton of people had the same experience with them. They were a bunk debt collection agency. Basically they hassled people for debt they didn't owe given statements they got ahold of. The weirdest thing was the connection they made between my cell phone and a friend of mine. I reported it to the Better Business Bureau.

Posted 3 years ago #
mrhineh
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I've been noticing more and more that the "zero down" and "zero interest" mortgage slammers call with posted number on the caller id, but when you dial it back, you get "the number has been disconnected" speech. Sneaky guys, these mortgage "brokers". Slime balls, one and all.

Posted 3 years ago #
nuni
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Traci, kind of the same thing happened to me. The person told me they were an old friend of so and so and they were looking for her. I told them I would take their number and give it to her (like hell I was going to give them her number!)

Posted 3 years ago #
datamuse
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My workplace public line has started getting calls offering business loans if you've been around for X months; I haven't taken any of these calls yet, but some of our student workers have. From their descriptions the calls sound really fishy.

It sort of amuses me because I work for a private university that is over 100 years old.

Posted 3 years ago #