Our mobile phone has the capacity to be uniquely intrusive. It may be that already, but all of us, I think, limit the number and range of people who have the number to try to limit the intrusion. Over the past six months I was unsettled by the receipt of text messages from NSW Rugby reminding me of a match, and I wondered whether this was an uninvited premium service. When I phoned I was told that, years ago, I'd provided the number when signing my son up to play at a local club, and the person who told me this happily removed my number from the roll. I have a policy of giving a false number when called upon to provide a number, to avoid the privacy reassurances and the insistence and thus the argument, but, as you'll understand, I needed to give a correct number in signing up my son to play rugby.
This week I had a more troubling intrusion. I answered my mobile phone at work to find Samantha from Fair Track trying to convince me to invest in her scheme of backing losers. Yes, backing horses to lose! Her firm had bought a list of phone contacts that included my number, and later someone from Fair Track told me they paid usually between $4000 and $5000 for between 4000 and 7000 names. Everytime we filled out a form we were providing data that could be sold to and by list brokers, this person said. Many businesses, she said, sold contact data.
The more relevant information attached to that contact the more valuable the contact, and I'd imagine many businesses are in a position to provide such targeting information as make of vehicle or ages of children or subscribes to horseracing magazine (I don't).
Yesterday I entered my mobile number on the Do Not Call Register at www.acma.gov.au, and there are penalties for commercial marketers calling me after a month or so.
I don't know how my name appeared on the Fair Track list, especially in view of the fact that I almost always give a wrong number. Maybe I'm on Fair Track's list because some bod with the same policy filled out a form at a racecourse somewhere.
Have marketers and premium service scammers managed to breach the cone around your mobile number?
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