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I’ve notice a pattern of weird phone calls over the last few years.

Feb 11, 2008: A female Wymount resident received a suspicious phone call in her home at 1:30 p.m. The male caller claimed to be from the psychology department and said he could try to help her relax. He got her to turn off the lights and lay down on her bed. The phone call ended when the girl’s cell phone battery died. BYU Police told her she should notify her phone company next time she receives a call so that they can trace it. (Source)

Nov. 7-9, 2007: Nine female students, living in Heritage Halls, reported receiving suspicious calls from a man who claimed that he was a BYU student doing an experiment for a psychology class. The police think this man is from California and is the same man who has been making these calls for the last four years. (Source)

Oct. 23, 2007: A 19-year-old female student, living in Taylor Hall in Helaman Halls, received a suspicious phone call from a man claiming to be a psychology student who asked her to participate in an experiment for his psychology class. She had read the police beat tip of the week in The Daily Universe on October 12, and hung up on him. (http://newnewsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/66075)

Oct. 17, 2007: A female student living in Wyview Park received a phone call from a suspicious man. The suspect claimed to be a psychology student conducting a project, and attempted to put her in a hypnotic trance. She gave him a false name when he asked for her name. When she finally told him she had had enough, he immediately hung up. (http://newnewsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/65969)

October 12, 2007 Tip of the week: Over the last three years, several students, mostly female students, have been receiving calls from a suspicious male individual. He calls at night, asks what they are doing, how they are dressed and if they will participate in an experiment, a study for his psychology class. He asks them to lie down on the floor then asks a series of questions and tells them to relax. An investigator from the police department has talked to a professor on campus, who is an expert in hypnotism. He says it is not possible to hypnotize someone over the phone. Some students have fallen asleep, woken up and weren’t sure what happened but whether they were really hypnotized or not is questionable. (Source)

July 4, 2007: A man was reported making a suspicious phone call to a female in Helaman Halls in which he claimed he was doing a psychology project and then proceeded to hypnotize the female student on the other end of the line. The roommate of the female came home to find her asleep on the floor. The female is reported of reacting strangely when certain words are spoken. Incidents of a similar nature have occurred about two dozen times in the past. There are no suspects, but the incident is still under investigation. (http://newnewsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/64793)

Feb 9, 2006: A female student living in Hinckley Hall, in Helaman Halls, received a phone call from an unidentified male claiming to be conducting a survey for a psychology class Feb. 9. The caller asked the student if she was relaxed and if she was doing homework. The student hung up after the caller asked her to lie down on her bed to get more comfortable. The police suspect the call is connected to numerous similar calls made over the last two years. (Source)

May 19, 2004:Two females living at WyView reported separate accounts of attempted hypnotism on the telephone from a male suspect May 19 at 9 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m., respectively. The victims reported a male-voiced caller representing himself as a psychology major conducting a survey. The victim of the second incident said she became suspicious when the caller said he was going to hypnotize her. Both victims hung-up the phone on the caller.

Never once did he call anyone in Deseret Towers, according to these limited reports.

Tell me your stories about how you have been separated with a working cell phone. Have you dropped your phone in the toilet? Has it just stopped working over time. Did it get hit by a car, or stolen on the pickpocket bus in Romania? Even if your story is not extremely interesting, drop a note so we can get an idea of what goes wrong with cell phones.

Dear Wells Fargo,

I really want a bank that just keeps my money safe and accessible. I don’t want you calling me many times selling some soft of subscription package to your many programs. I signed up for the national do-not-call list, which means that I really don’t like being bothered my various offers made by calling me. Just because I bank with you, doesn’t mean that I really want to be bothered by you.

Tonight you called me, hiding the caller identification of the source call. Thats just plain sneaky, and something I wouldn’t expect from a bank that I would like to trust.

If you call me, I will refuse any offer you present. Please stop calling me. I told that last caller not to call me again. If I receive any more phone calls from you that do not directly concern my financial accounts, I will strongly consider moving my funds to a different institution.

July 17, 2008 update:
BOB, in comment 10180, was very nice to describe to me Wells Fargo’s privacy policy. According to his suggestion, I went to their website and found my privacy settings already set to the following:

My Wells Fargo Privacy Settings

So my question now is the following? Were my privacy settings always prohibiting contact? Or were they changed by the Wells Fargo representative who called me last with whom I requested that they no longer call me?

The good news is that I haven’t been called in quite a while. Also, now I know that any calls I may receive in the future are in contradiction to my privacy settings and against Wells Fargo’s privacy policy.

Does anyone know where I can find similar privacy settings on the Discover Card website?

Update July 24 Today I received another phone call which introduced itself as being associated with Wells Fargo. When I asked the guy if he was aware that I had specified in my Wells Fargo privacy settings that I wish not to be contacted, he asked me what privacy settings I was talking about, and then he suggested that my system was incorrect.