No, You Can't Have My Number
By Brenda D. Farrell, 10.06.06

On the surface, it seems that we Americans take personal privacy and identity protection very seriously. We feed our old bills and bank statements into fine-toothed shredders. We conceal our personal identification numbers from those standing behind us at the ATM. Many of us even block our telephone numbers so they won’t be detected by caller ID devices.

But, despite these precautions, retailers are asking us to take a risk at the checkout. Cashiers now ask for customers’ telephone number.

Our phone numbers are then used by marketers to track where we live and what we are buying in order to send us custom marketing information. Have you ever bought a pair of new shoes and a few days later found a shoe sale flier from the same store in your mailbox? Unless you used the store’s credit card, you were probably tracked through the telephone number you gave the last time you made a purchase.

This is where the danger lies. When you say your telephone number loud enough for the cashier to hear, others can hear it too. The seemingly innocuous person standing in line behind you could very well be a thief --a criminal who can learn a lot about you from your telephone number.

By utilizing the reverse lookup tool on an Internet phone directory, he or she can obtain your name and street address. From there, he or she is just a few clicks away from getting turn-by-turn driving directions that will lead him to your front door. And if he runs your name and address through an online public records search engine, he’ll probably find out even more.

So, the next time a cashier says the store needs your telephone number, just say no. And if they insist, ignore the eye rolling and grumbling of the customers behind you and explain to the cashier why. Customers might just benefit from what they overhear.