I like telemarketers. Really, I do. I guess I don't carry the traditional disgust for them because my fingers have walked where theirs have walked -- along the keypad, dialing for dollars: working that second job to get through college, pay down debt or brush up my sales skills.

Unfortunately, what started out as an innovative outreach for local businesses has become an international telecommunications orgy leaving most consumers flustered and angered by dinner-time interruptions for offers of a better long-distance service, lower interest rate credit card or a debt-reducing equity loan on your house.

I'm not jumping on the anti-telemarketing bandwagon right now. It's just that I received a call this week that went beyond what I would call acceptable telemarketing behavior from a mortgage company.

During my telemarketing days, I rarely had anyone hang up on me. You know why? Because I respected their time and I really believed I had a product that they needed -- information on the real estate market in their area.

When the Jones' listed their house, I knew the neighbors were itching to know what the listing price was, how many bedrooms there were, if they had upgraded the house and what day would there be an open house.

As a local Realtor, I would simply call and tell them. And in a fast-moving marketplace, it was difficult for homeowners to keep up with their home values without that type of contact unless they were putting their house on the market themselves.

Stock traders have the daily, nay, 20-minute delayed ticker of what their stock has done for the last hour. The same is true for bond investors. For U.S. Bonds, you know what you're going to get when it matures. But in real estate you just don't know unless the neighbor comes by and tells you, you get a post card in the mail with the listing information or you visit the open house.

Of course, that was unless I called you with good news … "Mr. Smith, your neighbor's house just went on the market and Mr. and Mrs. Jones wanted me to call you and let you know it's priced at …" They would hold their breathe, waiting for me to tell them how much their "stock" had risen. I love telemarketing.

But then Sean called me today. Now I have a sour taste in my mouth for this industry that's facing extinction because of mega-corporate abuse of the masses. He works for a mortgage company in New York -- I live in Virginia.

First of all, the guy talked way too fast. I mean, I literally had to ask him to slow down several times so I could understand what he was saying. He apologized and blamed it on the three cups of coffee he had just consumed.

As he went through his script, he asked the usual questions you would consider normal from a mortgage applicant -- what's your interest rate, what's the balance, how long have you lived in the house, where are you employed, etc. Then -- he asked for my birthday.

That's when I ended the interview. He questioned my hesitation and said there was nothing to worry about, he'd be willing to tell me his birthday, gave me his phone number and a web site to check out his validity. He insisted that my birth date was a matter of public record.

Call me gun shy, call me overly cautious, but I refused to give this man that had called me from out of state and talked with me less than five minutes, my birth date.

Your birthday is one of the pieces of information used to verify your identity and run credit checks. I can't tell you how important it is for you to not discuss such personal information with people with whom you have no prior relationship.

There are plenty of loan officers in your local area with whom you can meet, look straight in the eye and smell their breath, who can give you the same programs someone from out of state can provide -- or say they're going to provide.

Guard your personal identification. Don't hand out information that, while may be a matter of public record, can provide the wrong people with the right information to delve into your credit.

Conduct a security inventory for yourself: where is your birth date, social security number, address, phone numbers and the like in public view? Are they on your checks? Driver's license? Insurance cards? Have that information removed.

Some industries get it, some still don't. In Virginia, the department of motor vehicles now allows you to request a state-issued driver's license number instead of using your SSN. That's a wise move and I would only hope that more agencies would get the message and remove the use of the SSN as a part of identification and member numbers.

Remember, the best guardian of your private information is you.

Published: November 7, 2003

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