I don’t know, it sounds more like phone everyone with his surname, someone’s got to be related.
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I’ve gotten calls for both my mother and brother; we do not share the same surname.
Further, that seems a like a really ineffective way of going about tracking someone down, especially when you consider all the peeps with über-common surnames like Smith, Jones, Johnson, etc.
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It is totally ineffective, but they get paid for trying. So.
Every several months I get a call for a guy named Brad on my work number. Apparently he listed it as his work number years ago on a loan, and he never paid the loan back.
No, I don’t know who Brad is.
No, I’ve had this number for over five years. My predecessor was not named Brad.
Yes, this is a place of business.
It hasn’t happened lately, so maybe the promises to remove the number, or at least now it’s a dead end, have actually happened.
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I’m not sure how they would do that if they were not connected to me in any way. Maybe they came across my name somewhere and decided to list me as a reference, saying I was related when I wasn’t. Or, they made up a random first name to go with their last name. I would think there would be protections against that.
If I had to guess, it would probably be that they were calling everyone with the same surname.
My last name is definitely not super common. It’s common enough where I have met other people with the same surname (or one letter off), and have come across TV/movie/book characters with the same name, but it’s not nearly in the same category as Smith/Jones/Johnson. Just by calling everyone in my metro area with my surname, you could easily find a contact number for Brian in an afternoon.
The problem is, it might not be the right Brian.
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I didn’t say that the people they were calling about weren’t connected to you in anyway; I said if someone you know uses you as a reference on an application, you can end up on a call list. That could be done without your permission, (like it was to me.)
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And if they aren’t connected to me, and just wrote a random name on the application?
That’s possible if not very probable. How common is your name?
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My first name is very common. If they already had the last name and had to come up with a first name, it’s possible that they’d pull my first name out of the clear blue.
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Learned is a common first name?
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[shrugs] I guess not.
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Seems like it could easily be a randomly chosen name.
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When people use up as a verb.
There, I’ve said it.
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As in “up yours?” 
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There’s a shooter at Texas Tech right now. Do I try to get ahold of friends I think are likely to be on campus, or do I wait so lines aren’t tied up for emergency services?
Edit: Apologies if this is the wrong place. I hope this is just grinding my gears and not fucking today.
Edit2: Wellness check gone wrong, student the cops were checking on was shot. Situation contained. But if anyone knows the answer to this question, I would like to hear it. 3rd time this month I’ve seen a gun situation on a friend’s campus.
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I’m OK with that usage. I was more referring to sentences like “Frank will need to up his reputation in order to be competitive.”
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I’m not sure what the answer is. I guess if I were in a situation where my life was in imminent danger, I wouldn’t want to be dealing with my phone blowing up with texts right at that moment, but I would appreciate it afterward. I also think it depends on how close you are to the person. If you are like, their mom, then I say text away. But if they are like, someone you went to high school with and still stay loosely in touch with, I say, wait a bit and let Mom and Dad get through.
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I know that Facebook and Google have been proactive in certain situations like natural disasters, but I’m not sure about smaller-scale emergencies.
Google does produce an app/service with this in mind:
https://contacts.google.com/trustedcontacts/
It seems tailor-made for these types of situations. Don’t take this as a endorsement. I haven’t used it, and there may be concerns about giving Google even more of your personal information. On the other hand, I’m not sure that there is a way to provide this service without at least giving up something.
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Right. I’ve only been in one lockdown due to an active shooter. It was nice to have people text me, because I was alone in the lab when we went into lockdown. But the gunman was elsewhere on campus. We were just being held to keep people from wandering into danger and because they didn’t know yet if he was alone (he was).
I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that I did the wrong thing, though with my chatter during an actual emergency.
Oh ecch! 
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“Only” one, eh?
You know you’re an American if…
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