In the spring of 1999, Haruo Tanaka (not his real name) became interested in buying a condominium and visited several showrooms in Tokyo. Each time, he was asked to fill out a questionnaire. He provided his name, age, address and phone number as well as his annual income.
He decided not to buy a property after all, so when condominium builders called him later, he replied that he had lost interest.
Soon after, he started getting phone calls from sales reps at companies he had never heard of. He does not remember what they were peddling, because he hung up before they got to the core of their often aggressive sales pitches. What stuck in his mind, however, was that the callers all knew his name.