oh yes, I mean it’s easy to get names/phone numbers. But mailing lists sometimes grow stale and old. Something like the Quinnipiac survey will want to get fresh and up-to-date phone numbers so they pay mailing list brokers for the lists.
When someone does a survey and asks for your phone number/email address, you’ll notice they rarely contact you.
Instead they sell that information they collected. I’ve put in fake information such as changing my name a little, etc to track them and see how long it takes to end up back to me and who sends in.
My best success was VDUAT.
That last name misspelling whoever I gave it to, I started seeing it six months later in a mailing from AT&T. Then a mailing from a credit card a month after that. Then I just started seeing it all over the place, on emails, stuff in the mail, etc. Then it started showing up on my credit report as an alternate name.
It was fun to track it.