Sep 6, 2016
If your phone number has 7 digits plus a three digit area code, then that is how they got your private, DNC, unpublished number.
It is very easy to create a list of real phone numbers and those with a real live person that picked up.
Simply get a VOIP computer to phone system connection. These used to be very expensive so time back, so only large corporations could afford them, but with the introduction of Magic-Jack, Skype, and Google Voice that allows cheap to free international calls by using a computer, now anyone including scammers can use them.
Then get a computer. Computer have a really easy way of performing repeated tasks. Simply tell it go through a looped task of feeding a number to the VOIP system, starting with the lowest possible phone number and ending with the highest possible number.
Lastly, set it all up, click GO, and walk away.
The computer with dial sequential numbers and flag each one that did result in a ring tone and did result in a pickup.
After a relatively short time, it spits out a list of "suckers" to now make calls too in order to scam.
This sucker list now has value to other scammers and is repeated sold around the black markets of scammers and thieves.
That is how they got your number.