As anyone who's tried calling their cable company knows, many U.S. firms have slashed costs by outsourcing things like customer service to India, the Philippines and other countries with lower labor prices. But why stop there? Turns out, there's no limit to the sensitive tasks that companies are exporting to the Third World.

Whether it's a matter involving your health, education or finances, there's a good chance some lesser-paid worker thousands of miles away has been trusted with the outcome. To follow: ten jobs shipped offshore that you probably didn t really want to know about.

See Slideshow: 10 Ways Outsourcing Could Alter Your Life

SERVICE: Medical Image Diagnostics

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Disease detection

Here in the States, there just aren't enough radiologists to go around, especially on the night shift. As a result, hospital emergency rooms are zapping MRIs and CT scans to places like Switzerland, Australia and India where radiologists working the day shift can provide faster service. (Now you don't have to wait for sunrise to find out that you've got a tumor.) The downside, according to American College of Radiology spokesman Shawn Farley: If an overseas doctor fails to detect that suspicious growth, "Is he going to come back to the States to be sued?"

SERVICE: Standardized test design and scoring

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Whether your child advances to the eighth grade

ManyaGroup, the Indian franchisee of The Princeton Review, says it works with some of the world's largest academic assessment and publishing companies, designing and grading standardized tests for K-12 students in 10 U.S. states. The company's 200 workers in New Delhi not only churn out those endless multiple-choice questions on middle-school level math, science and English tests; they also grade the more subjective essay portion of standardized tests.

SERVICE: Debt Collections

WHAT'S AT STAKE: That $22 you owe the gas company

For retailers and utility companies, the cost of hiring a collections firm can outweigh the size of the debts being collected. The solution? A growing number of lenders are hiring collections agents in India to chase after debtors on the cheap -- meaning that folks with smaller balances are more likely to have their dinner interrupted by a long-distance collection call. On the other hand, when you know that the dunning agent is physically located somewhere across the Pacific, those phone calls may seem a little less threatening.

SERVICE: Credit report corrections

WHAT'S AT STAKE: The accuracy of your credit report

If you dispute a false account or debt on your credit report, the major credit bureaus including Equifax and TransUnion typically forward your complaint to a third-party contractor in a place like Costa Rica or the Philippines, where frantic clerical workers are expected to process up to 22 disputes an hour.

SERVICE: Architectural Services

WHAT'S AT STAKE: The design of your office building or home

An estimated 5 percent of U.S. architecture firms are turning to workers in India to perform computer-aided design and drafting services such as creating utility plans, drawing elevations and creating construction documents. Indian architecture firm Indovance even takes on design tasks such as creating floorplan layouts. Now you can proudly inform guests that your seemingly cookie-cutter McMansion is actually an exotic import.

SERVICE: Online Greeting Cards

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Your Valentine's Day mash note

123Greetings.com, the most popular e-greeting card site in the U.S., employs about a hundred writers and illustrators in, you guessed it, Calcutta. How do card creators draw inspiration for their American-style messages? By watching re-runs of "Oprah" and "The Daily Show" on YouTube.

SERVICE: U.S. news reporting

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Coverage of your local school board

Financial-news service Reuters has long employed journalists in Bangalore to cover U.S. companies. But more recently, the Pasadena, Calif., web site PasadenaNow.com surprised readers by hiring workers in India to cover their city council meetings from afar.

Proud publisher James McPherson says he has plans to increase his offshoring efforts.

SERVICE: Tax preparation

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Your 2008 tax refund

See our story, "10 Things Your Tax Preparer Won't Tell You

SERVICE: Recruiting and hiring

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Whether you get a job interview

It's finally happened: In their rush to ship every possible job overseas, U.S. companies have resorted to outsourcing their own hiring process. A Mumbai-based resume screener working through the night can use software to sift through thousands of job applications, pick the 10 best candidates and zap a summary back to the States so a recruiter there can start calling in applicants the next morning.

SERVICE: Virtual loan officers

WHAT'S AT STAKE: Whether you get a home loan

The practice is less common now that lenders are no longer deluged with mortgage applications, but some banks still farm out the job of selling and underwriting home loans by contracting with virtual loan officers in India. Bottom line, says Jared Katz, VP of operations for outsourcing outfit MarinCorp Solutions: "Anything automated can be done just as well offshore."