Weird phone calls and possible identity theft? Or something?

[Espy]

So for the last 6 months or so I have been barraged on and off with phone calls for one "Adele Mnenga" living here in Minneapolis.
The phone calls are all from "universities" or places that offer "loans" to go to college, etc, and each one says that "Adele" signed up to get the phone call. Sometimes they call 6+ times a day then I won't hear anything for a month.
I've run a pipl.com search for this lady and I get results that indicate she may be a 80+ year old woman or dead. In fact when I search my own phone number on pipl.com I don't find me, I find her!
My credit is fine, no one is opening accounts in my name. The state attorney general says they can't do anything.
I'm at the point where I'm going to have to change my phone number because I can't stop this. Am I missing anything I can or should do or has anyone else had this happen?

 

[strawman]

I've never had it that bad, but I just tell the callers they've reached the Davis residence, and that no one we know matches the name they are asking for. Eventually they stop calling.

Also, they typically have either no caller ID, or there are only a few agencies calling, and you might be able to simply start blocking their numbers over time. You can probably transfer your number to google voice and control how numbers are blocked rather than dealing with trying to get call number blocking set up with your phone company, or setting up phones that simply don't ring for blocked numbers.

But, of course, changing your number might also resolve the problem - it's just a rather painful thing to have to do.

 

[Dave]

I agree with Steiny. Not much you can do. What probably happened was a phone number got entered wrong into someone's database and they sold said data and now it's in the wild. Once it's out there it's hard to get rid of.

Example: A friend of mine and I bought something at Best Buy in the early 1990's. Even now sometimes these pages will identify me and him as Mark and David Stone like we're an old gay married couple. Shows up on all of my credit reports, background checks, everything.

 

[phil]

replace ransom with loans, and daughter with phone number.

 

[Espy]

Yeah, thats what I figured. It seems to come and go in clumps. I will get 2-8 phone calls a day for a few weeks then nothing for a month then it starts again. Always the same stuff, never the same people calling twice so I figure this person got on some list with my number and now they are all selling it. It's super annoying.

 

[GasBandit]

I used to get 2 or 3 unsolicited phone calls like that a week. Then I cancelled my landline, got a cell phone (loves me some caller ID), and changed my outgoing voicemail to me saying "This is (my name)'s voicemail. Press pound to leave me a voicemail now. If you do not press pound, you will have to sit through seven minutes of me reading CS Lewis' Jabberwocky. T'was mimsy and the slithey toves did gyre and gimbal in the wabes..."

Fixed that riiiiight up. Even got rid of the recordings. (the recordings ran out and hung up before the outgoing message completed)

 

[Shannow]

replace ransom with loans, and daughter with phone number.

Watching that, and replacing it like you said..and I almost fell out of my chair laughing.