LONGWOOD, Fla. – Julie Ashley has been facing a wave of unwanted calls from telemarketers for the last month.
The 40-something Longwood resident says the people calling her never leave a voicemail and spoof names and numbers for everything from funeral homes to Pulse, so she will answer.
What they are selling is health insurance. In fact, by the time we arrived at her home, Julie Ashley had already received 19 calls from telemarketers before noon.
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“They don’t market it as if they are trying to change your insurance. They never say that,” Ashley told News 6. ”I had five different insurance changes last year. They said they could give me additional benefits.”
She says they offer perks, like groceries or transportation service, but the health insurance has been subpar at best.
So how did they get her number to begin with?
Alex Quilici, founder of the YouMail spam and robocall blocking system, said the people behind phone spams actually purchase blocks of personal information from data brokers.
The telemarketers will then call consumers from an internet or a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) number and will continue to call until you pick up.
“So what’s happening is they’re calling from hundreds or thousands or 10,000 different numbers so they can’t get blocked easily,” Quilici said.
YouMail has just launched a premium system that provides an additional number for its customers to keep their personal numbers out of the data broker circuit.
Main phone numbers, along with other personal information, are collected and sold by roughly 102 data brokers right now. YouMail offers a free data scan to determine how much of your personal information is on various data broker sites.
We checked Julie Ashley’s name and found 345 exposures or pieces of personal information on 64 data broker sites.
A scan of my name caught 621 “exposures” on 101 data broker sites.
According to IdentityGuard.com, “Whenever you sign up for an online service, shop with a website, or create an account, you add to your online presence.”
YouMail is one of dozens of companies offering data deletion programs to remove your information from the broker archives.
For more information and to run a free privacy scan for your name go to blog.youmail.com.
How To Remove Your Information From the Internet
- Secure your online accounts.
- Remove your data from Google search results.
- Request that third-party websites remove your information.
- Delete old accounts and apps.
- Boost your social media privacy settings.
- Opt out of data broker lists.
- Use anti-tracking and privacy tools.
If you have a consumer or investment issue email makeendsmeet@wkmg.com or text the words.
Make ends meet along with your issue and contact information at 407-676-7428.
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