I just had a dialogue with my telephone company about this sort of black-hat telemarketing practice. The calls are purportedly from "Cardholder Services" and encourage you to 'lower the interest rates on your credit cards'...the call appeared on my called-ID screen as a local number even though it was from Cardholder Services ...an entity that I have told repeatedly not to call. Apparently they farm disconnected telephone numbers (perhaps by area code first, then by local prefix...) and somehow use them to mask their incoming telemarketing calls, to 'trick' someone into answering. Of course we're on the national do-not-call registry.  Now I wish I were a computer programmer/software writer.  I am going to file a complaint against them with every entity that I can locate that deals with these parasites. I hate parasites; even more do I hate sneaks and intentionally-misrepresenting themselves 'people.' In my specific case there is no way the phone company can stop this; some of the phone company employees themselves are victims!