The perils of a nice telephone number

When I changed phone carriers recently,  I got a new cell number.  (I moved my old telephone number to Google Voice and it forwards to my new one. So that number you have for me still works.)

It so happens that my new telephone number is a nice, easy-to-remember one. Pretty cool, right? Well not quite.

It seems that someone who applied for a student loan put down a fake number (MY number) on their loan application. Now, the US department of education's automated voice calls me three times a week to direly warn Dylan Davis (name changed) to call them back and set up a payment plan.

Once, I stayed on the line and tried to tell the loan collector on the other end that they had the wrong number. Didn't help.  Two days later, there was the automated voice again.

My phone number is on the Do Not Call registry. But it doesn't apply either to government agencies or to "people who you have done business with before". Plainly, the US government thinks I have done business with them before. They have it on their form that I borrowed their money!

Sigh.