This reminds me of something that happened when our once small town added a new prefix to our telephone numbers. A regional tire chain opened for business and the last 4 digits of their fax number was the same as mine, except they had the new prefix. I'd had the number for almost 8 years and it was my business number as well as my fax number.

They had this number printed on all their new promotional material, corporate hq had the number, well you get the picture. We were inundated with faxes. Not only their corporate information, daily and weekly financial reports, internal information, but customer credit applications. I would call their office and ask them to please change their information.

This went on for about 3 months. I had to turn the phone OFF at night. I ran out of paper. I would pick up the phone and hang it up again. I turned OFF the fax and just left the phone on so no incoming faxes could be received. At the end of the week, I would take all the faxes to the manager and put them on his desk and explain to him that this was a violation of his customer's privacy.

He just didn't get it. He had the audacity to ask ME to change MY number. I refused. I called his boss. Explained to him that would start calling the customers whose information I had and explain to them that this regional tire chain was violating their privacy.

The phone number got changed the next day! They never did reimbursement for the paper or even offer services or anything in exchange for the inconvenience. Trust me, I don't refer anyone to this tire chain.

I knew more about that store than the manager and the bookkeeper did.

About 2 years later, I started getting the calls again. New bookkeeper. They stopped after a week and a visit from me with a pile of faxes.