Consumers a Call Away From Losing Anonymity : Phone sales: Using sophisticated equipment, firms with 800 or 900 numbers can get instant profiles of callers.

Companies with “800” or “900” numbers can instantly learn the socioeconomic status, credit rating, address, age and sex of consumers and their household members. They can even tell if callers to their services are more likely to prefer steak to shrimp, football to polo and Chevies to Cadillacs.

Increasingly, 800 and 900 services are using a host of sophisticated telecommunications equipment to get the phone numbers of those who call their services, and from the phone numbers detailed information about the people to whom the phone belongs. These innovative and controversial computerized data base systems allow companies to tailor their sales pitch to the specifics of the customer.

It happens quickly; callers can be identified and categorized usually before the call has been answered.

Using census data and other public information, such as consumer surveys, telecommunications companies design data bases that help their clients determine the lifestyle and tastes of callers. The listings vary, ranging from those that can identify a few hundred thousand households to others that can pinpoint virtually every neighborhood in the country.

Target direct marketing is not new. For years, companies have been able to use billing lists to get phone numbers, which are then used to acquire addresses with reverse directories. But with this technology, target marketing is not only done when sellers call customers, but when consumers call sellers.

“It is extremely disturbing and chilling that almost no consumers are aware that many companies can, within seconds, obtain detailed electronic dossiers of them,” said Richard Kessel, Executive Director of New York State Consumer Protection Board and a vociferous critic of the new technology. “As we head into the ‘90s, the most important consumer issue is going to be privacy.”

Kessel has asked the Federal Communications Commission to suspend the service until it implements safeguards against companies’ obtaining information without the caller’s knowledge. The FCC has not yet responded.

Kessel said companies should have recorded announcements about their information-gathering ability. He thinks callers should have the option of hanging up before they hear the pitch. Nine-hundred numbers are already required to have announcements about the cost of the phone call.

Other groups, including the Direct Marketing Assn. in New York City, think people should be able to press a number combination that would block the seller’s access to the caller’s phone number.

Although consumer and privacy advocates have focused their opposition on the front-end technology--called Automatic Number Identification--the data base systems provide the details some people might not want released. With the detailed demographic information, companies make assumptions about callers’ race and class depending on their neighborhood, which can be determined with the phone number area code and prefix.

Claritas, an Alexandria, Va., company, groups callers in 40 “clusters,” ranging from “Pools and Patios,” the richest consumer group, to “Emergent Minorities,” the poorest. “Clustering” is based on the belief that “birds of a feather flock together,” according to the company’s spokeswoman, Colette Yorrick.

Claritas’ most popular data base, PRISM, costs $6,000 and is available to all companies. The information helps sales representatives give an effective pitch. It also helps companies design future marketing strategies; they can bombard the caller with phone calls and junk mail.

Companies can also produce their own data bases or refine commercial data base systems and sell them. If a person calls a furniture store to inquire about a new kitchen table, it could, for example, sell the information to Sears. Sears could then market a variety of related products to the caller.

Claritas defends its data bases by saying companies use them to monitor general consumer patterns rather than specific buyer information.

“It’s not as if they use them to check out specific information about each buyer,” Yorrick said.

The American Civil Liberties Union fears companies will use this information to discriminate. If the caller does not belong to a desirable “cluster,” the sales representative might give a half-hearted pitch, or no pitch at all.

“Considering the economic incentives, I have a hard time believing that a company will not use this information to discriminate,” said Lynn Decker, spokeswoman for the ACLU’s New York office. “And there is no way of monitoring it. The only safeguard is letting the caller know.”