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Ok so I hope this doesn't turn into much of a rant. But I think I'd like to give others a warning about this, and ask more experienced expats for advice.

It seems that the moment you get a phone number in Norway, your number, name and address gets added to some database and everyone is free to contact you. I get calls from telephone salespeople daily (not pleasant, but expected, as long as you ask them to speak English they hang up), scammers (usually with an Indian accent) and random people constantly. They know my name and they know my address. I was not given the choice to opt out of such a thing when I got my number.

It got even worse when I registered a sole proprietorship. For some reason, your full name must be added to the business name. For a good while, my full name (which is an extremely rare and recognisable name) was visible over my house ON GOOGLE MAPS. That's terrible! I hurried to take charge of the Google Enterprise listing and change it, but who knows how long it was there before I spotted it.

I started getting calls daily from several types of sales men, this time for enterprise products. These are far more persistent - they will continue to speak to you if you ask them to speak in English, and they throw Norwegian law at you if you refuse their services. They also call you daily.

I have since dissolved my business (which was a one person hobby business anyway) and blocked all numbers that aren't in my contact list. I still gets calls daily, but they're auto-rejected now.

Does anyone know how to opt out of such services? I'm so incredibly uncomfortable knowing that everyone can look up my name to find out my number, address and email and what I do (did) for a living. I have always used online handles very different from my name and avoid posting pictures of myself for this reason. My facebook is also private. If anyone has any advice on how to opt out of these listings and get some much needed privacy I'd really appreciate it.

Sorry about the rant.