Receiving lots of marketing calls for someone else?

[twistero]

I'm having a pretty weird problem with spam calls lately.


Multiple times a day, I receive calls on my cell phone from all kinds of companies asking for a certain "James [last name redacted]", who supposedly requested information / quotes online. There are colleges offering higher education, home renovators offering to fix "my" bathtub, self-publishing companies, even drug addiction help lines, and they all ask for this specific James person. Needless to say, my name is not James, and I have never requested such information anywhere.

I answered some of them, telling that there's no James at this number, and they either hang up after a quick apology or tell me right away that they will remove my number from their list. Most of the calls I didn't pick up and went to voice mail, and some callers left messages stating their business and asking James to call back. I also looked up some of the numbers they call from, and they are indeed from the companies they claim, so it looks like things are real on their end.


Now here's the weird part:

1. A caller from some educational institution said that they also sent an email to the address that came together with this number, and it bounced - there's no such email address. Another college caller actually read the email address out to me: it's [some name that I didn't quite catch]@aol.com, but the name is certainly not James whatever.

2. If I plug my phone number into this reverse lookup website: http://www.reversegenie.com/ It actually returns 2 records associating my number with James, who apparently lives in the same city as I am. However, it seems the matter is not so simple as "James had this number before me", because I have had this number for 4 years now, and these calls have just started weeks ago.

3. Very few people actually know this number. I have a Google Voice number, and I always use that number for everything; only a few close friends have this number.


So, is getting these random targeted marketing calls a thing? Is someone profiting from this? Am I just unlucky that my number is randomly chosen to be used in some weird scheme? Because an alternative explanation would be that one of my close friends is leaving my number in these online inquiry forms in order to spam me, and I certainly don't want that to be true.

[ajkula66]

My first question would be: is the number that you're being called at on "do not call" list?

If it is...have you been able to locate the current "real" number for James Doe?

[twistero]

My first question would be: is the number that you're being called at on "do not call" list?

Nope.
Should it be? If this really is someone putting my number into online inquiry forms for whatever reason, it seems DNC would not help at all.

If it is...have you been able to locate the current "real" number for James Doe?

Nope. Tried searching for this person online, and the best I can get is name and city. Some sites want me to pay in order to access a full record, but I don't want to do that.