How do fax advertising companies get my number?
There are a number of ways that companies acquire fax numbers to send advertising to.
These include but are not restricted to:
Buying them from companies called list brokers,
These companies sell all kinds of contact information to be used for direct mail, telemarketing and faxing. This is not the biggest source of fax numbers because these companies tend to be expensive. As the name implies, these companies do not own the information that are selling and offer any information that they can get their hands on. An example of this would be the list broker has an agreement with a car retailer where past customers of the car retailer are on sold.
Online directories.
Manny companies advertise on a number of on-line directories. There are companies, especially ones operating abroad taking this information out of these directories and then selling the information back into Australia. Generally these directories are not very accurate but in the case of faxing, the information does not have to be. If one is advertising on the internet a decision has to be made at to the value in including a fax number. If little or no response is received by fax and you would prefer not to receive fax advertising, don’t include your fax number.
Harvested Fax numbers from the web.
Fax numbers and other information can be collected from the web. There are computer programs designed to scourer the web looking for fax numbers and other information. If your company has a website with your fax number included on your “contact us” page or elsewhere on the site, these programs can find them. One way of getting around it is by putting your contact information as an image, not as text because these programs are reading text.
Automated Dialers
On occasion machines are set up to randomly call numbers to find new active phone and fax numbers. If, while doing this, your fax number is called and your fax machine answers the call, then they now know your fax number and can sell this information to companies using fax advertising as a medium.
Do Not Call Register and Silent numbers.
As one can see from the above, the Do Not Call Register and silent numbers do not come into play. Because it is businesses who mostly have fax numbers, not private individuals, businesses are targeted. With this in mind advertises are mostly advertising with this in mind. Silent numbers are not listed. This does not mean that they cannot be found. The web page where residential numbers are entered specifically mentions that it does not cover fax numbers.