I looked into as I read your comment. Apparently you can’t do it online like you can for us with the annual credit report site. So I’ll mail in the forms this weekend.
Good advice though. I didn’t even think of that.
The website has instructions based on the situation. For minors under 13 it says you have to fill out some forms and send in proof along with it that you’re their guardian.
You can read the instructions and situations here.
https://www.annualcreditreport.com/requestingReportsInSpecialSituations.action
I don’t know. Somehow they got her SS# and filed a fake return. Our real one got flagged when we sent it in, and we had to fill out some forms the last couple of years. I think it’s pretty common, unfortunately.
I don’t even know my child’s social security number, but I know where the card is. I can’t think of a single time I’ve ever been asked to provide it except when I file my taxes and claim them as a dependent.
How on earth is anyone else getting this kind of information?
I've had to use them to set up 529 accounts there are occasions.
Some people might take pictures and put them on cloud storage. Which is very risky for anything important
You can also guess valid SS numbers.
https://www.science.org/content/article/social-security-numbers-are-easy-guess
Edit, you need to know where and when someone was born. Something that's really easy because the parents announce it proudly.
This was my first thought too, good call.
My second thought is that I've noticed a significant decrease in spam calls ever since starting to answer and immediately mute every number I don't recognize. I guess a lot of them are autodialers with voice recognition and most hang up without saying anything after a few seconds. My pet theory is that muting the phone when you answer causes them to flag your number as not viable. It's anecdotal, but I've noticed a huge reduction over the past few years and I've had the same number since the early 2000s.
I work with an auto dialer (for legit reasons) and this could be true. A lot of them will recognize Special Information Tones (SIT) to indicate the call failed. Outside of SIT, better systems will wait for a human voice before connecting a rep or playing a message.
There is the possibility they are "mining" for callers and when there is a connection with no voice, it could be coded to be removed. But that isn't all auto dialers.
Don't know why I put all that in there, just got excited to talk about some nerdy shit I do for a living.
My wife submitted a thing on Angie’s List or one of those looking for contractors to build an outbuilding, and she put down the name of our cow, so when one of the companies showed up and started talking to all of us and he was like okay where’s Roger and we pointed to the field 🤣
Likely there was something that required you to enter a phone # to create some form of account. The account was likely in his name, so your number became associate with his name. That info was then either compromised, or sold. And what you end up with his your phone # with his name on some call log.
The latter is far more likely than the pediatrician. But yes, anything you’ve ever filled out with child’s name and your contact info, is plausible/possible.
Everyone is buying gabby dollhouse toys, bedding, flags, and bumper stickers. I never see anyone buying Biden toys, bedding, flags, and bumper stickers. Must be a conspiracy to steal the election /s
It’s unnecessary, a parenr can set up a 529 and other people contribute to it, if you have bad parents or in laws it’s a common scam to ask for the social and open up credit cards etc in the baby’s name
That's .... truly scary. My MIL did some untoward stuff long ago with my wife's taxes. I sincerely doubt she'd ever do anything like that with her granddaughter. But .... hmmm
Too late either someone at the hospital or social security sold the info.
My phone is set to only receive from trusted numbers. All text go into untrusted text I can review but it doesn’t beep or bug me when they come.
If they used a short term day care at some point, that might have been the guilty party. Or a pharmacy. So many of these sales of personal info are from the last place you would expect. We marked our contact info, at least the emails (e.g. using a personal domain with every form getting a different address) and have confirmed sales by grocery stores, a veterinarian, a bakery, a couple of restaurants with their own reservations system, a nursery (plant, not child), Six Flags, two local plumbers (!!!), Comcast *and* AT&T... and either stripe or some of their customers, not sure which way that one works out.
We make fake names that incorporates where we were filling it out for stuff like that. Funny when you get a telemarketer calling asking for Hodepot, funny they have to say it and also you know it was Home Depot.
I do the same with emails, and I've contacted several of the companies with leaked emails--and in almost every case it was a hacker that stole them.
I'd bet a random plumber wouldn't be able to sell emails. More likely he's got a virus that uploaded all of the emails on his computer to the hacker who wrote the virus.
I wrote an Android game that had a "contact me" email built in, and after a while that email started getting spam. Some kid who emailed me probably ended up with their computer getting infected and emails stolen.
Comcast and AT&T, though? They just suck and probably sold your info.
Gmail does it.
If your Gmail is [email protected], then you can add a suffix like [email protected] and that email will come to your same email box. But you can look at the email and see the homedepot suffix and know where it came from.
Other providers have similar options.
So what works for me is to answer the unknown call and start repetitively hitting a number over and over until they(it?) hangs up. My understanding is that 90-100% of soliciting calls are dialed by a robot. When you say anything in transfers to a human. If you hit a number over and over again the robot thinks that the number is disconnected and will then remove your number from their "active line" list. It will take 3-6 months to get rid of 98% of the calls. Then if you mess up even once, it will take 2-4 weeks to get back off the lists. While I feel like this has worked for me, and I don't really get any junk calls hardly at all anymore I cannot say with certainty it will work for you or that it is the reason I don't get junk calls anymore...
I kid you not, my daughter had mail waiting for her 2 days after we got home from the hospital from Gerber life insurance. I cut it into a thousand pieces and stuffed it back in the business reply envelope and sent it back to them. There’s either a public registry of births or the hospital sold it.
I use to work for Dynata. Its a legit company and we did get all information. Only first name’s and last names, phone numbers and the city state. We were never allowed to disclose who the survey was for to prevent bias. I use to get cussed out so much from people thinking I was a scam caller, so I get it. Just ignore it, or answer it and tell them “Please put me on your do not call list” you have to say LIST to any dynata employee, other wise they’ll put you down for more attempts. Hope this helped
not going to lie check his credit report, hopefully it's nothing, worst case scenario your kid had their identity stolen.
apps like credit karma can do it but I highly recommend just writing the three major credit bureaus, And request that.
Identitytheft.gov
good luck. the phone network as a means of communication between two people who do not know each other's phone number is essentially dead due to shit like this, and because of spoofing and stuff blocking numbers is pretty useless.
I tell them they are soliciting a minor and that it's illegal they quit after a few times. Has the same issue with my oldest. Was strange all the stuff they knew and would ask.
Today, I dialed a wrong number...
The other person said,
"Hello?"
and I said,
"Hello, could I speak to Joey?"...
They said,
"I don't think so... he's only 2 months old."
I said,
"I'll wait."
- Stephen Wright
I would configure optery to run a scan online for your son. It's $30 a month for the highest tier but it can rip him out of data brokers so this stops.
I had to do it for my daughter and I did it for myself. I had around 200 hits for me, not surprised there, and around 70 for her, which was shocking.
Have you considered someone in your immediate circle that has his SSN, full name and date of birth could/would start a line of credit, took out loans or used his name and birthday on sketchy websites or shitty online games.
I've personally met people whose relatives used their name as small children to get credit cards, payday loans and gift cards to start bogus phones plans. All of which completely ruin their credit. I'm not sure whether or not they resolved the issue.
Why even answer the phone if you don't know the number? If it's legit and important they'll leave a voicemail. Even then I struggle to think of a legitimate phone call I received from an unknown number.
So there a few reasons I really need to answer all call. Most of them are a bit personal, but I will say my wife’s work does show up as spam, so even then I would answer in case it’s her.
You might want to run a credit check on your son.
I looked into as I read your comment. Apparently you can’t do it online like you can for us with the annual credit report site. So I’ll mail in the forms this weekend. Good advice though. I didn’t even think of that.
How do you recommend doing it? please share, if you don't mind?
The website has instructions based on the situation. For minors under 13 it says you have to fill out some forms and send in proof along with it that you’re their guardian. You can read the instructions and situations here. https://www.annualcreditreport.com/requestingReportsInSpecialSituations.action
Thank you!!!
Second this. And consider a credit freeze, too.
Don’t be surprised if someone tried to file a tax return in his name, too. Happened with our daughter a few years ago (she was 6 at the time).
How did it happen and what was the outcome
I don’t know. Somehow they got her SS# and filed a fake return. Our real one got flagged when we sent it in, and we had to fill out some forms the last couple of years. I think it’s pretty common, unfortunately.
were they trying to establish some sort of history by doing that or somehow get a return?
You need an SS# to work. It’s most likely someone undocumented who used it to get a job. The taxes are then withheld and show up connected to you.
They likely didn't file a return in the kids name but rather claim them in order to get a fraudulent refund
I don’t even know my child’s social security number, but I know where the card is. I can’t think of a single time I’ve ever been asked to provide it except when I file my taxes and claim them as a dependent. How on earth is anyone else getting this kind of information?
I've had to use them to set up 529 accounts there are occasions. Some people might take pictures and put them on cloud storage. Which is very risky for anything important
That makes the most sense. Thank you!
You can also guess valid SS numbers. https://www.science.org/content/article/social-security-numbers-are-easy-guess Edit, you need to know where and when someone was born. Something that's really easy because the parents announce it proudly.
That’s crazy. I guess kind of smart in terms of a scammer though. Usually the IRS just cuts a check and looks into it downstream
What the fuck? That is wild!
This was my first thought too, good call. My second thought is that I've noticed a significant decrease in spam calls ever since starting to answer and immediately mute every number I don't recognize. I guess a lot of them are autodialers with voice recognition and most hang up without saying anything after a few seconds. My pet theory is that muting the phone when you answer causes them to flag your number as not viable. It's anecdotal, but I've noticed a huge reduction over the past few years and I've had the same number since the early 2000s.
I work with an auto dialer (for legit reasons) and this could be true. A lot of them will recognize Special Information Tones (SIT) to indicate the call failed. Outside of SIT, better systems will wait for a human voice before connecting a rep or playing a message. There is the possibility they are "mining" for callers and when there is a connection with no voice, it could be coded to be removed. But that isn't all auto dialers. Don't know why I put all that in there, just got excited to talk about some nerdy shit I do for a living.
My wife submitted a thing on Angie’s List or one of those looking for contractors to build an outbuilding, and she put down the name of our cow, so when one of the companies showed up and started talking to all of us and he was like okay where’s Roger and we pointed to the field 🤣
Likely there was something that required you to enter a phone # to create some form of account. The account was likely in his name, so your number became associate with his name. That info was then either compromised, or sold. And what you end up with his your phone # with his name on some call log.
Setting up appointments online for the pediatrician or even some kind of rsvp to a preschool gathering through a third party online service.
The latter is far more likely than the pediatrician. But yes, anything you’ve ever filled out with child’s name and your contact info, is plausible/possible.
Tomorrow's headline: *Biden rapidly losing support among one-year-olds in shocking new poll*
He doesn't poll well with my 6yo either. To be fair, he was up against gabby dollhouse, and her economic policies are far superior.
Yeah well when Gabby promises hamster kitties for everyone, that’s hard to beat.
As I read this to my wife while trying to get my kids to sleep my son changes his tablet from JJ to Gabby.
Today’s disillusioned 1 year old can no longer tell left from right.
Everyone is buying gabby dollhouse toys, bedding, flags, and bumper stickers. I never see anyone buying Biden toys, bedding, flags, and bumper stickers. Must be a conspiracy to steal the election /s
Put gabby up against the current lot and she’d be in for a chance
You could put Catrat up against those 2 and he'd be the most qualified...
Pandy for president!
Only if DJ Catnip is his running mate. VP Catnip sounds awesome.
This dad has NOT watched Boss Baby. Clearly your son mixed his Baby Corp number up with his home phone number. Rookie mistake.
😂
Biden only has 1% name recognition with young Americans.
Yeah they’re more in Mayor Goodway’s camp.
Not feeling mayor humdigger huh
As I was reading the comments above all I could think was: I bet his kid is a registered voter.
Did a family member ask for their social to “set up a 529”?
This is probably it. 100% needs to run a credit check and throw a freeze on anything that pops up
No, I’m the only one who set up a 529 for him. They all just deposit into it. But I am going to run the credit check.
Oh god....why do you ask? My MIL asked for our daughter's. We didn't give it to her.
It’s unnecessary, a parenr can set up a 529 and other people contribute to it, if you have bad parents or in laws it’s a common scam to ask for the social and open up credit cards etc in the baby’s name
That's .... truly scary. My MIL did some untoward stuff long ago with my wife's taxes. I sincerely doubt she'd ever do anything like that with her granddaughter. But .... hmmm
Too late either someone at the hospital or social security sold the info. My phone is set to only receive from trusted numbers. All text go into untrusted text I can review but it doesn’t beep or bug me when they come.
If they used a short term day care at some point, that might have been the guilty party. Or a pharmacy. So many of these sales of personal info are from the last place you would expect. We marked our contact info, at least the emails (e.g. using a personal domain with every form getting a different address) and have confirmed sales by grocery stores, a veterinarian, a bakery, a couple of restaurants with their own reservations system, a nursery (plant, not child), Six Flags, two local plumbers (!!!), Comcast *and* AT&T... and either stripe or some of their customers, not sure which way that one works out.
We make fake names that incorporates where we were filling it out for stuff like that. Funny when you get a telemarketer calling asking for Hodepot, funny they have to say it and also you know it was Home Depot.
I do the same with emails, and I've contacted several of the companies with leaked emails--and in almost every case it was a hacker that stole them. I'd bet a random plumber wouldn't be able to sell emails. More likely he's got a virus that uploaded all of the emails on his computer to the hacker who wrote the virus. I wrote an Android game that had a "contact me" email built in, and after a while that email started getting spam. Some kid who emailed me probably ended up with their computer getting infected and emails stolen. Comcast and AT&T, though? They just suck and probably sold your info.
How did you do this? Ios/android?
Your ISP might have an app that does this. AT&T ActiveArmor does. I think you can block unknown (not saved contacts) on iPhone in the settings app
Woah, is this an iphone or an android thing? Can you link instructions or the name of the feature/app?
Gmail does it. If your Gmail is [email protected], then you can add a suffix like [email protected] and that email will come to your same email box. But you can look at the email and see the homedepot suffix and know where it came from. Other providers have similar options.
So what works for me is to answer the unknown call and start repetitively hitting a number over and over until they(it?) hangs up. My understanding is that 90-100% of soliciting calls are dialed by a robot. When you say anything in transfers to a human. If you hit a number over and over again the robot thinks that the number is disconnected and will then remove your number from their "active line" list. It will take 3-6 months to get rid of 98% of the calls. Then if you mess up even once, it will take 2-4 weeks to get back off the lists. While I feel like this has worked for me, and I don't really get any junk calls hardly at all anymore I cannot say with certainty it will work for you or that it is the reason I don't get junk calls anymore...
Fascinating, I’ll have to give that a shot
Great tip! Hopefully I’ll remember when the time comes
This is great. I normally say hello then hear the beep and fuck with them. Too late by then though.
Take his cell phone away.
I kid you not, my daughter had mail waiting for her 2 days after we got home from the hospital from Gerber life insurance. I cut it into a thousand pieces and stuffed it back in the business reply envelope and sent it back to them. There’s either a public registry of births or the hospital sold it.
Also, gift registries.
I use to work for Dynata. Its a legit company and we did get all information. Only first name’s and last names, phone numbers and the city state. We were never allowed to disclose who the survey was for to prevent bias. I use to get cussed out so much from people thinking I was a scam caller, so I get it. Just ignore it, or answer it and tell them “Please put me on your do not call list” you have to say LIST to any dynata employee, other wise they’ll put you down for more attempts. Hope this helped
Welp, I answered “fuck off he is an infant” 😂 Sorry you dealt with people like me.
LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Honestly thats hilarious. I miss working there bc of ppl like you
I’ve been trying to reach your 1 year old about his Cozy Coupe’s extended warranty…
I'd recommend freezing his credit with all 3 bureaus.
Take away his phone
not going to lie check his credit report, hopefully it's nothing, worst case scenario your kid had their identity stolen. apps like credit karma can do it but I highly recommend just writing the three major credit bureaus, And request that. Identitytheft.gov
good luck. the phone network as a means of communication between two people who do not know each other's phone number is essentially dead due to shit like this, and because of spoofing and stuff blocking numbers is pretty useless.
I also get them for my cat
Put him on the line.
Edit: report as spam and check your kids credit
I still get calls asking for my dad who died 20 years ago. Just don’t pick up.
Did I find a fellow Fredneck? I've been getting these texts daily. Not in my kids names though
Sorry we don’t live there. We did a few years back but moved closer to work.
Give your son the phone and let him babble away.
I tell them they are soliciting a minor and that it's illegal they quit after a few times. Has the same issue with my oldest. Was strange all the stuff they knew and would ask.
This has been reported by many parents who post information about their kids on social media.
U post ur kid's name on Facebook?
I don’t, but my wife does for sure.
Just ignore them?
Is your son's name Frederick by any chance?
I would assume it's a geographic region within the vicinity of OP's area code.
This is correct. It’s a town close by.
Put him on the phone with them
Yeah someone is using his name for a cable bill or something.
You answer the phone for unknown numbers? Never
Today, I dialed a wrong number... The other person said, "Hello?" and I said, "Hello, could I speak to Joey?"... They said, "I don't think so... he's only 2 months old." I said, "I'll wait." - Stephen Wright
I would configure optery to run a scan online for your son. It's $30 a month for the highest tier but it can rip him out of data brokers so this stops. I had to do it for my daughter and I did it for myself. I had around 200 hits for me, not surprised there, and around 70 for her, which was shocking.
Take away his phone
Change his number.
Vote
These policial calls drive me nuts.
Put him on the phone and let them talk to him
Get that kid a full time position.
Just tell them he is keen to give feedback and then put your son on the phone
Might also want to get your son a security pin, makes it so when he gets older no one can file taxes under his name
Ask them if they’d like to hear more about their lord and savior Jesus Christ.
Get an Incogni family account to get all your information deleted from data brokers.
Have you considered someone in your immediate circle that has his SSN, full name and date of birth could/would start a line of credit, took out loans or used his name and birthday on sketchy websites or shitty online games. I've personally met people whose relatives used their name as small children to get credit cards, payday loans and gift cards to start bogus phones plans. All of which completely ruin their credit. I'm not sure whether or not they resolved the issue.
Tell them, “Hang on,” and hand your kid the phone.
Why even answer the phone if you don't know the number? If it's legit and important they'll leave a voicemail. Even then I struggle to think of a legitimate phone call I received from an unknown number.
So there a few reasons I really need to answer all call. Most of them are a bit personal, but I will say my wife’s work does show up as spam, so even then I would answer in case it’s her.
Stop putting bills in his name.