Nusience Calls

I recently ordered a broadband service from TalkTalk to be installed in one of our staff members lodgings. Hardly a trouble free installation but that's another story. This order obliged us to take the line rental from TalkTalk so I specified no directory or operator listing with all outgoing calls showing unknown.

The account for the installation is paid by the Company.

Extreme care is taken with giving out the TalkTalk number and will in all probability only be know by less than a dozen or so people.

Now for ordering purposes I provided my ex-directory DDI work number.

Well the TalkTalk database looks very leaky to me, or customer details are being sold by TalkTalk ,as we certainly were not expecting a stream of unsolicited calls on both our staff members phone and my DDI within days of the service going live. We can rule out a regurgitated number for the previously user of the number as the call begins with "is that [staff members surname]/[name of company]".

I see it as being pointless in complaining to TalkTalk on this matter but it reinforces my belief that TalkTalk's administration side of the business lacks a certain something and will therefore take the earliest opportunity to move to another provider.

You tell me how the number became known by the spammers.

ICO/Ofcom would be interested if you can make a firm case that the names used were only provided to TalkTalk for billing purposes and no-one at lodging has leaked the info e.g. filled in numerous online competitions where many are just a way of gathering data