With historical unemployment numbers and mortgage defaults, it’s no wonder debt collection is on the rise. Collection agencies and their personnel used to be limited to phones and snail mail when recovering owed debts. But in today’s internet age, debt collectors are using Facebook or similar social networking tools to track accounts down, as this MSN Money article shows.

And they haven’t gotten any nicer about doing it, either. Debt collection agencies are known for their aggressive and often illegal tactics to collect on past due debts. Usually third-party entities that specialize in buying bad debts for less than what is owed, they can only make a profit if they are able to collect.

This CreditCards.com article describes how 40% of respondents in a national Scripps Howard survey conducted last fall answered yes to at least one harassment tactic used by debt collectors, which included whether or not the agency threatened violence, made multiple calls and phoned at inappropriate or otherwise illegal times such as before 8 a.m. of after 9 p.m.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) said debt collection was the number one consumer complaint in 2008. And for the first six months in 2009, those figures went up another 19%.