Slashdot Mirror

the front page has a link to file a complaint. follow that, you'll get your web form.

You may file a complaint at this address

Have you tried to complain at https://www.donotcall.gov/Complain/ComplainCheck.a spx ?

NOTE: Seems like only Mozilla will work when submitting a complaint. At least, that was my experience.

This link doesn't seem to be working, so here's the

You can file a complaint here.

Being that this do not call registry (technically) links e-mail addresses to phone numbers, I can almost believe your conspiracy theory, but I have a thought of my own: If you look on the first page, it says if you register after October 1st, the telemarketers have 3 whole months to call you before you can lodge a complaint. This list sounds like a great deal for companies looking for new people to call, ironic as it may seem.

• // START OF Data Collection Server TAG
  // Copyright 2002 NetIQ Corporation
  // V2.1
  ...
  var dcsADDR="g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net";
  

What's that doing in there?

There's also a link to Microsoft's Intellisense web site on the Government's Do Not Call page, but that looks like typical Microsoft dreck from their page generator. The "NetIQ" stuff was put there on purpose.

All this is totally unnecessary. The pages are so simple that all this stuff is doing nothing useful.

I think it needs to be mandatory that those conducting phone calls for the purpose of commercial activity (solicited or otherwise) should be required to display their number and business/name on the recipient's caller ID. This means if you're calling someone to try to sell them a product, you can't call anonymously, either.

If you've read the FTC DNC site, you will find that CID blocking will no longer be allowed after Jan 31, 2004. Problem Solved!

Now that it's enforceable it's too bad that the list is locked out.

It's also worth noting that the site (previously) reported that it may take up to three months for any number you enter to be included in the list. So don't call your layer just yet.

You may not be speaking of the Federal Do Not Call list, but they do not ask for the name to go with the phone number, rather they request that you have enter an email address so that they can email you. Also, you can call 1-888-382-1222 and it will add the phone number you called from without asking for other information.

Here's what I gathered would be the impact of the new telemarketing laws:

1. Every time the laws change, successful teleservices firms shift their focus. When cold calls (those not borne from an existing business relationship) became less profitable due to legislation, most firms switched to clients that wanted to call their own customers, such as local telco's. This exception is in the new TSR as well, btw. Besides that, those calls are also starting to lose profitability, so inbound sales are becoming more and more the focus of these firms as their clients focus on other forms of advertising.

2. The DNC list would certainly save the telemarketer as much hassle as it does the consumer on the DNC list. As a telemarketer myself, I get extremely annoyed when people dance around pretending they're not available when in reality, they just don't want to be called. In short, if you don't want to be called, JUST SAY SO!

3. This goes along with #2: Even though charities, political groups, and companies that have a business relationship do not have to use the Nat'l DNC list, they still have to honor your DNC request. Again, JUST SAY IT! Don't dance around it.

My experience as a telemarketer has taught me so much about it, that I honestly do not recieve telemarketing calls anymore. No, I do not own a Caller ID box, I did not buy a "Privacy Manager" from my telco, I do not own a screening box (ex. TeleZapper). I simply answered them when they did call and asked them not to do so. For that matter, when you sign up with a telco or something like that, why not "opt-out" right off the bat? You do have that power.

BTW, According to the FTC DNC website, telemarketers will have to send caller ID signals after Jan 31, 2004, so don't count on your unidentified call block. Of course, you'll know them when they show up on your caller ID. It won't be completely useless to have, because other people can still block their CID signal, only businesses cannot.

On a side note, I do know another telemarketer who did sell "solicitor blocks". He says his sales are way beyond goal, LOL! People say they didn't appreciate his call, and he used that as a selling point!

If the telemarketing firm is not communicating DNCs back to the company they are working for and if that company is not scrubbing future lists to be sent to other telemarketing firms, then the problem clearly resides with the company and not the telemarketing firms. If I'm not mistaken, using different telemarketing firms is not a legal end-run around do-not-call requests.

From the Do Not Call FAQ: Even if you put your number on the National Do Not Call Registry, a company with which you have an established business relationship may call you for up to 18 months after your last purchase or delivery from it, or your last payment to it, unless you ask the company not to call again. (In that case, the company must honor your request not to call. If they subsequently call you again, they may be subject to a fine of up to $11,000.) Also, if you make an inquiry to a company or submit an application to it, for three months afterwards the company can call you. If you make a specific request to that company not to call you, however, then the company may not call you, even if you have an established business relationship with that company.

Of course the telemarketing firm isn't going to put you on the DNC list for every one of their customers, just the one they are calling you about at the moment.

Finally, let's be clear, I support the National DNC list myself. I don't think it goes far enough when telepanhandlers, politicians, and surveyors can still call me... oh, and people dialing wrong numbers. I get way too many of those.

Furthermore this list prevents marketers from contacting you ever,

Actually, you're on the DNC list for 5 years. Then you must register again.

I certainly don't think it was a scam all along, but if the law is overturned, I doubt there is anything to stop telemarketers from using this list.

You don't believe you are arguing in favor of spam because you believe that unsolicited email from "legitimate businesses" isn't spam, but it doesn't change the facts.

These unsolicited messages were never considered "spam" prior to the last few years which saw a deluge of useless and annoying crap. Indeed, it took that deluge to create the meaning of "spam" which irks Hormel to no end. While the volume was extremely low (SiNR, anyone?) most folks didn't really mind. Now that the volume has skyrocketed, folks are (understandably) upset. But does that mean the folks sending unsolicited messages were sending spam? Perhaps.. should they be villified for it in the same manner as the "penis enlarger" folks? I think not.

Legitimate marketers have overused telemarketing to the point the goverment has now created a Do Not Call list and passed laws forcing marketers to honor it. The term "junk mail" came about because so many "legitimate" offers come in the mail that people consider those offers junk. Both have much higher costs to the marketer than email. Yet you expect me to believe that email marketers will control themselves and it won't be a burdon - if we could just get the pesky scam artists out of the way. Sorry, history doesn't support your argument.

With respect to the telemarketers, much of the outrage caused by them was not that they merely called, but that they called at unacceptable hours and a few did not honor requests to "remove me from your list". There were also the few that preyed upon elderly folks, scamming them out of large sums.

Instead of enforcing existing laws or setting up something to enforce better compliance with "remove" requests, we now get the "Do Not Call" list. Hell, I signed up for it myself. I didn't find myself deluged with calls, but I did have a few who refused to honor my "remove" request. It was easy for me to say "no thank you" and hang up. As long as the call was made during local business hours, I really had no objection. Calling me at 8:00pm, which interrupted my personal family activities, did annoy me. A simple restriction on times (IIRC, the cut-off time was set at 9:00pm, which is unreasonable in my opinion) and enforcement of "remove" requests would have sufficed. However, none were forthcoming so we now have a complete "Do Not Call" system (and even that has some holes in it). Here is the registry FAQ which shows the holes. Pay special attention to #3. That's the same type of loophole which will be attacked by the same types who pervert "Opt-In".

How much junk snail mail do you receive? I receive, on average, 5 per week (outside of the usual mailers for the local supermarket, etc.). I find this high, but I realize that my address is associated with a local high-visibility sporting club (which receives much more than I do at my home). This isn't very annoying to me as I can simply drop it in the paper recycling bin.

By the way.. the USPS attributes the majority of its business to the bulk email crowd. These pieces of mail cost approximately 3 cents each. Apparently this cost is not much of an impediment to junk emailers. Their target lists cost more than that.

Where we disagree is your belief that I should have to put up with a billion "one time" offers without complaining. There are a lot of legitimate businesses out there, but they shouldn't email me unless I ask them to. If just one-tenth of 1% of the legitimate businesses in the US sends me one email a year, I'll have to dig through a whole bunch of crap I don't want.

As shown above, the cost of sending bulk post isn't much of an impediment if someone wants to contact you. The cost of a legitimate company sending email is really only slightly less (after all, they pay for bandwidth too, have their own servers to maintain, etc.). If you stripped out all of the "spam" messages you received in a month which are from the "penis enlarg

The exception is a CURRENT buisiness relationship...not a prior one.

Not exactly.

Q: My number is on the National Do Not Call Registry. After I bought something from a company, a telemarketer representing that organization called me. Is this a violation?

A: No. Even if you put your number on the National Do Not Call Registry, a company with which you have an established business relationship may call you for up to 18 months after your last purchase or delivery from it, or your last payment to it, unless you ask the company not to call again. (In that case, the company must honor your request not to call. If they subsequently call you again, they may be subject to a fine of up to $11,000.) Also, if you make an inquiry to a company or submit an application to it, for three months afterwards the company can call you. If you make a specific request to that company not to call you, however, then the company may not call you, even if you have an established business relationship with that company.

Emphasis added.

If the US Govt. were only interested in money and companies that generate a lot, what about donotcall.gov?

Q: What happens to my complaint?

A: Do not call complaints will be entered into Consumer Sentinel, a secure, online database available to hundreds of civil and criminal law enforcement agencies worldwide. While the FTC does not resolve individual consumer problems, your complaint will help us investigate the company, and could lead to law enforcement action.

It doesn't say anything about a right of private action, a la the junk fax law. So, if you get bothered, just hope that millions of other people got bothered as well. Maybe (maybe) Uncle Sam will do something about it.

Bummer.

And then there's this:

Q: What if I get a telemarketing call, but can't get the telemarketer's name or phone number?

A: For law enforcement officials to take action on your complaint, they need either the telemarketer's name or phone number. If you want to report a Do Not Call violation, please get that information.

I just thought that was funny. It amounts to suggestion that telemarketers block their caller-id to avoid trouble, and a suggestion that callees express interest long enough to find out everything they can about the caller.

I learned that lesson a while back when got a call on my cellphone years ago from a telemarketer who claimed he didn't know the name of his employer. He hung up after I asked what was printed on his paychecks.

I sure hope that the national list has a more effective mechanism for reporting offenders.

They, at least, include a phone number.

From http://www.donotcall.gov/FAQ/FAQConsumers.aspx

For more information, see the privacy policy. You may also call 1-888-382-1222 to submit a complaint; for TTY, call 1-866-290-4236

How did you file a complaint? The page for filing complaints doesn't even do anything, it just says that telemarketers must stop calling you on October 1st and that complaints may begin being filed at that time.

According to the FAQ

Q: Are telemarketing calls from overseas covered?

A: Yes. Any telemarketers calling U.S. consumers are covered, regardless of where they are calling from. If a company within the U.S. solicits sales through an overseas professional telemarketer, that U.S. company is liable for any violations by the telemarketer. The FTC can initiate enforcement actions against such companies.

So, local US companies cannot use overseas telemarketers.

gsparrow asks:

Can telemarketers call your cell phone number?
Of course they can. However, barring certain exceptions, it is illegal for them to do so if your name is on the national do-not-call list. Alternately, it is illegal for any telemarketer to call you if you have requested to be added to their own "do-not-call" list. Note: telling them "don't call me" or "take me off your list" might not be sufficient, you must ask to be added to their "do-not-call list".

Do you need to put your cell number on the do not call list
You don't need to put any number on the list, but it can be useful if you want the protection that the list offers. It could be especially useful for a cell phone, given the pricing structure of most cellular plans.

or is it already protected since you pay on a time basis?
My understanding is, the fact that you pay for time spent on incoming calls doesn't protect you in any way from any call. If anything, it makes you more vulnerable, and makes registering the number on the do-not-call more useful.

From the Do Not Call FAQ:

Q: If I register my number on the National Do Not Call Registry, will it stop all telemarketing calls?

A: No. Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most, but not all, telemarketing calls. You may still receive calls from political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors or companies with which you have an existing business relationship.

I think the allowed types of organizations are a lot more tolerable than someone trying to sell me into a book club.

From the page:

"You can register your home and mobile phone numbers for free."

Almost makes me wish I still had my old cell-phone account with Caller Pays...

Enforcing the Do Not Call list from other than US telemarketers is covered in the Do Not Call legislation. A call from outside the US will not necessarily be blocked, but the parent company selling the product as well as any vendor involved in delivering that phone call is responsible for that call.

That is, a US company involved in any way, shape or form with the delivery of that phone call may be fined as defined by the legislation. Just because the phone call originates outside of the US does not let any US corporation get around the Law.

Also, realize that many states have their own Do Not Call lists and the legislation behind the state list may be different than the Fed. list.

If you haven't seen what all the specifics are, I encourage you to look at
donotcall.gov to get the facts. There is a grace period from the time you register your phone # and there are exceptions which is all explained at
donotcall.gov . Additionally, you may want to look at your state governments homepage to see if it has its own list.

Enforcing the Do Not Call list from other than US telemarketers is covered in the Do Not Call legislation. A call from outside the US will not necessarily be blocked, but the parent company selling the product as well as any vendor involved in delivering that phone call is responsible for that call.

That is, a US company involved in any way, shape or form with the delivery of that phone call may be fined as defined by the legislation. Just because the phone call originates outside of the US does not let any US corporation get around the Law.

Also, realize that many states have their own Do Not Call lists and the legislation behind the state list may be different than the Fed. list.

If you haven't seen what all the specifics are, I encourage you to look at
donotcall.gov to get the facts. There is a grace period from the time you register your phone # and there are exceptions which is all explained at
donotcall.gov . Additionally, you may want to look at your state governments homepage to see if it has its own list.

Just about the only person *not* exempted from calling people on the list is Homer and his auto-dialer.

Not true. Almost all of the exceptions, such as the one for telecom companies, were removed shortly before it was enacted. The only exceptions left in are for political donation solicitors (gee, big surprise that politicians would keep that in), charities, phone surveyors not soliciting for goods or services, and "companies with which you have an existing business relationship."

Of course, that last exemption is the one that's going to be abused. However, any entity at all is subject to the $11,000 max fine if they call after you tell them you don't wish to be called.

pre existing laws covered this. if you asked a company to put you on their DNC list, they had to. if you ask them and they still call you, it's considered harassment.

Sure, but there are many ways around this. Most companies contract with telemarketing companies who then do the actual calling. The telemarketing contractors would keep separate DNC lists for each client. They say "I'm calling on behalf of Frobarrific, Inc." and not "I'm from X telemarketing company. Would you like some frobnozzles from Frobarrific, Inc.?" It's also much harder to keep track. All I need now is the confirmation from the donotcall.gov site.

Anyway, you'd have to recieve at least one call from _each_ company. I don't want _any_. Ever. This way, no matter who is doing the calling, they have to check and make sure that my number isn't on the list. Since it is, they aren't supposed to call me at all. Not even once.

All the Federal DNC list is doing is giving those of us who loathe telemarketing a way to tell all telemarketers that we don't want calls. The Feds aren't legislating telemarketers out of business. If so many of us sign up, and the profits are gone, then I submit that they were surviving by bullying gullibile people into buying shit that they didn't need. If that's the case, I don't care at all that they're out of business.

Wow, a federal bureaucracy really put together a nice site! Clean, well-designed, excellent usability, good FAQs. Go, FTC!

This will all be blindingly obvious to most readers of /., but just for the record:

Don't use your personal email address for anything online. Don't post to usenet with it, don't use it to register for anything, don't ever use it where there's any chance of it being sold to a third party or picked up by a web crawler. Use a free throwaway web-based account like hotmail or yahoo, that's what they're for. I have a verizon.net primary email address, and I've never received a single piece of spam from it.

However, I still have a forward-only email address from my university circa 1992. Back then, there was no spam and that address has to be on every spammer's list on the planet. I still get a legitimate email every year or two, but spam outnumbers these by at least 10,000 to 1. SpamAssassin does a surprisingly good job of identifying the garbage.

I also use a proxy to surf the web, as well as a large hosts file that reroutes requests to adservers to 127.0.0.1:80, combined with a utility that returns a transparent 1x1 gif to any request on port 80. And of course I use mozilla to block pop-ups and whatnot. I'm so used to surfing in this way that I always recoil in horror when I have to use IE on a naked, unprotected box. How on earth can anyone stand it?

As for more traditional types of spam such as telemarketers, there's the national do not call list. It's free, so there's nothing to lose. You'll also want to check out the many excellent resources at the Junkbusters website. One of the most useful features is a Junkbusters Declare page, which builds custom form letters for you that you can use to opt out of Direct Marketing Association junkmail, as well as telling your financial institutions, etc., not to sell your name to third parties. I used it, it's painless, and my privacy is protected.

Of course, it would be much better if we didn't have to jump through hoop after hoop just to get through the day without being pestered by morons.

Now you have the IPs, the URLs, the company names, etc.

So report these to every blackhole list available, report the hijacked material on the sites to the original publishers, check his providers for more spammers like him, and report the provider if necessary (so they start taking an active part in this as well) and get on to the next guy.

If ISPs began taking basic measures to block spam, refuse services to spammers, contact the providers of spammers, and blackhole domains, IP's, and networks that spam or encourage spammers, the spammers would eventually end up in a spammers ghetto of unscrupulous providers that could be easily blocked or filtered.

If it is left up to law enforcement and legislation, there will be loopholes as there are in the National Do-Not-Call Registry, and we will have opened up the door to congess regulating the use of email.

In Salt Lake (and other cities I suspect) they paint the entire bus (windows and all) with ads. It makes riding on a bus a really dark, depressing gloomy experience. I would rather walk than ride an ad painted bus. But, there is no inch of human dignity that isn't up for sale.

But on a positive not, the shear distaste and mass rejection people have for spam, popup ads and telemarketers might spawn a whole sale rejection of the intrusive ad culture. People are ticked and are fighting back.

I have actually seen two websites use it

http://www.donotcall.gov/Register/Reg.aspx is built using Microsoft ASP.NET

I'm posting this anonymously because I'd be ashamed to have my name tied to defending Windows. Your comment is definitely true for versions of Windows up through ME. But I've been running XP on a Sony Vaio for the past fourteen months, and I have never had to reboot. In fact, I don't even know if XP has a blue screen of death, cuz if it does I've sure never seen it.

Contrary to longstanding contention here on Slashdot, one's personal experience with an operating system on a single computer (especially one tailor-made to be supported correctly by XP) are not indicative of product failure.

I work with Windows machines on a daily basis. Windows XP does crash. One sure-fire way to make it unstable at one point seemed to be installing differing brands of SDRAM simultaneously. Of course, another great way to make Win2k/XP as useful as a bucket of sand is to replace the motherboard. Sure, you don't have to re-install, per se, but you do have to re-copy the entire operating system and re-apply all service packs and product/security updates.

Despite its thousand liabilities and the fact that Windows helps fund a scummy corporation, I don't think that XP can be criticized for instability.

Sure, when you compare it to the house-of-cards operating systems that preceeded it (9x/ME), it's solid as a rock. However, when you get into the server arena and critical use, high load situations and start comparing it to the well-established UNIX, Solaris et al. and even the venerable Linux you start to notice a significant difference in reliability.

I can tell you emperically that I've seen more "Internal Server Error", "Server too busy to handle your request", etc. messages from IIS than from Apache. donotcall.gov, as a matter of fact, has been having reliability issues right from the outset.

In short, you were right to post anonymously.

Are telemarketing calls from overseas covered? Yes. Any telemarketers calling U.S. consumers are covered, regardless of where they are calling from. If a company within the U.S. solicits sales through an overseas professional telemarketer, that U.S. company is liable for any violations by the telemarketer. The FTC can initiate enforcement actions against such companies.

It really upsets me that these business are exempt (even though they can't use a professional telemarketing firm, according the posted faq), There is no reason that I would want to get calls from these business as opposed to others.

I really like my state's (Wisconsin) no-call list (except for the 2 year limit opposed to the federal 5 year limit). The only exemptions make some sense (previous business relationship, non-profits, politicians, surveys), and they require that all telemarketers not block Caller ID, that's great thinking if you ask me.

• long-distance phone companies
• airlines
• banks and credit unions
• the business of insurance
• political organizations
• charities
• telephone surveyors

I personally do not care that they have my email address. To not be interrupted four times while sitting at my table for dinner is priceless. Besides - what makes you guys think that the government has no clue what your email address is??

Their Privacy Policy states: "If you contact us via the Internet, we also collect your email address to confirm your registration request. We will store your email address in a secure manner, separate from your telephone number. We will not share your email address with telemarketers." That's good enough for me.

Exemptions:

- Charities
- Companies you have "done business with" (ie you bought something from them)
- Long Distance companies
- Insurance companies
- Banks (including credit card companies)
- Airlines
- Political fundraisers
- Overseas telemarketers


It's all Right here. In my opinion it's hardly worth registering. "Professional" telemarketing companies could become phone number resellers. Professional telemarketers would get the list from the do not call registry, then sell the list to private companies' in-house telemarketers. Since it's legal for most private companies to call you still, and they now have a list with your correct phone number, your calls may increase, not decrease.

In other news: The National Do-Not-Call Registry has gone live today. Go register your number today here.