Here's a weird phone Caller ID thing that I don't quite understand:

[MineralMan]

I was having trouble with one of the house phones, so I called my wife's cell. She uses Verizon for her cell service. The phone rang, and she says, "What the heck is this?" On the caller ID on her Blackberry, my name appeared, along with the title of one of the pages on my website, which describes my little retirement business.

The house phone is a residential phone, and is not connected through Quest, our phone company, with any business name. To check, I called a second land line in our house, and the caller ID just showed my name, which is how the phone is listed.

I'm trying to figure this out. Did Verizon do some sort of internet search on the number and grab the title of the first page containing the number, or what? I'm very confused, and don't know quite what to do to get that off my caller ID. It's a residential number, but I do list it on my business website, since my cell is almost always off.

Has anyone else had this happen, and is this something new?

[Skip Intro]

1. Check how you/the # in question are stored in her BB phone book/contact list.

Her phone is going to show whatever name/description is attached to that number in her phone's phonebook/contact list.

:shrug:

[MineralMan]

4. Yeah, it's in there with that, as well, but she says she didn't enter

the info. In fact, she said that she stored it as "Home" in her phone. She wouldn't list it that way, because I doubt she even knows what my website says on that page. It's her number, too, and it's in her phone book just as the number to call if she needs to reach me.

She absolutely wouldn't have typed that particular web page title in there. In fact, that title only exists as a metatag, so she'd never have seen it, even if she had visited the page, which she probably never has. The display title on the page is completely different, for SEO purposes.

[FBaggins]

2. Chances are that you're set up as a contact in her phone...

...and the contact lists a webpage.

She likely did it herself but didn't realize what she was doing - and/or it was imported from a more comprehensive contact list on her PC.

[MineralMan]

11. Now that could be. She had just synched the BB with

her Outlook calendar and address book. I'll have to see what she has in there, but I doubt she'd have any detail about me in there. She knows who I am, after all. But she's on Facebook, and uses it on her BB, and so am I and I have that business description there, and on a couple of Google Blogger.com Blogs. How interesting. Of course, I use a Tracfone, which is never on. I don't even know my own number, and have to look it up if someone wants it.

Now, I don't really care, since I make no attempt to have anonymity on the web. It's hopeless anyhow. But, it's interesting that the Blackberry appears to go and try to tie things together, all on its own. Ain't technology great?

[SoCalNative]

3. It's a BlackBerry thing

People on your contact list will automatically show up with info that is on your Facebook, etc pages...it's like a meshing of info for contacts that are across various programs that one has on the BB.

[JuniperLea]

5. Well! Thank Goddess my InterTube name and my real name...

are different enough it shouldn't make a difference! And I don't access Facebook via my BlackBerry... hmmm... but my daughter does! She loves playing with my BBerry... hmmm...

[MineralMan]

7. Hmm...it's still really weird. She said that she added the number

with the name "Home," which makes sense. She simply wouldn't have ever thought to have even entered my name. Now, my name is the name on the account, and a search for the number on Google does lead to that site. How strange.

Seems like the Blackberry is taking it on itself to go get information. As I said in a previous reply, the only place that particular phrase shows up on the website is as a title metatag for the page. It isn't even visible on the site.

I did some searching, and if I entered the phone number and the phrase in Google, it did find that page, but, if I enter the phone number alone, it shows the standard Quest residential listing.

The only thing that changed recently is that she added the Bing! app to her Blackberry. I wonder if Bing! did a web search on her phonebook and dug up any business listings based on the number. That could explain it, I suppose.

[SoCalNative]

8. She didn't add it

another BB thing...they added it because it became the official browser for them via deal with Microsoft

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Something kinda similar happened at my house tonight

A man knocked on the door and said he was here to buy something my son had put on ebay. But my son had not given the guy our address so he asked how he got it and the guy said "From your email address. I looked it up."

So is there somewhere you can look up email addresses and find street addresses?

[MineralMan]

9. Uh, yeah. I just looked up my email address, and there

was my physical address, pulled from my website. That was Google. Didn't show up on Bing.

If your email address is connected with your physical address on any website, it's likely to show up in a Google search.

[virgogal]

10. God---I'll be waiting for the responses to your question. Scary.

[MineralMan]

13. Go Google your son's email address. You'll probably find

your street address as the first result in the Google search results. And there's no way to remove it, either.

[virgogal]

15. I did my son,who lives out of state,and it came up with no

street address but my town in MA,as did all the other ones that I checked.

[MineralMan]

16. Google your son's email address. Your street adress will probably

be the first hit in the search results.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. No. It's not.

Now this is creepy.

[Control-Z]

12. Kind of on subject -

I've been getting 1-000-000-0000 calls today. I haven't picked up since they've been on my cell. I can't imagine the calls to be legit.

[MineralMan]

14. That looks like a spoofed number. It's easy to do. Probably

a sales email or robocall. That's why I use a tracfone, and leave it off, except when I want to make a call.