calling third parties

I guess your question is whether or not a collection agency can call people associated with the debtor. Well, if they have no contact information of yours, they may call your references for your number or address. But they can't discuss your debt situation with them or threat/abuse them. It is against the FDCPA guidelines.

they also can only contact a specific third party one time, unless they later have legitimate reason to believe that the third party has new information. They can ONLY try to ascertain your location, they are not allowed to discuss anything about the matter with that third party. And, they cannot falsely identify themselves either--they cannot claim to be a long lost friend from college or an old army buddy, or some other type of business. If they already have a good address or phone number for you, then they are violating the FDCPA by calling a third party. But the key is "good address or phone number". If they send you letters and call and you never speak to them, wont answer the phone, and dont respond to letters, they can try to make a case that they do not know if the locating info they have for you is good since they have never actually been in contact with you using that info.