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On DDoS, SPAM, Telemarketing And Harrasment?
I should clarify. When I speak of "commercial" phone and "commercial" e-mail, I mean unsolicited contact from a company with the intention of selling you something. Telemarketing has become a large problem in the past decade and I see the spammer as the digital cousin of the telemarketer. However, we now have protections from SPAM yet no protection from the telemarketer (believe me, I've tried ... there was no way I could get an anonymous call block in my area and most telemarketers will not identify themselves via CallerID).
How does the Denial of Service attack fit into all of this? It may not be "commercial" traffic, but it is unsolicited and dealing with it does consume your precious time to get the problem fixed. It's yet another form of harrassment, albeit a different and malicious form. It's like someone calling you up every five minutes and then hanging up. Sure it's harmless, but what happens if someone is trying to make an important phone call to you and can't get through?
Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?
I'd be interested in hearing what you think.
Update: 04/19 05:49 by C : CuriousGeorge113 beamed us this little tidbit: "There's a very interesting SPAM article over at Salon.com today. The article talks about a new SPAM law soon to be in front of Congress, why it won't work, why people SPAM, and why ISP's dont bother to sue SPAMers." so it looks like our protections against SPAMers although in-place rather ineffective. This situation bears watching.
The federal Telecommunications Act makes it difficult for consumers to stop telemarketers. Yes, there is a fine for a repeat call after you ask to be taken off the dialing list, but in reality, it's a pain in the ass to collect. You have to log all calls from the telemarketer: date, time, company name, supervisor and the poor SOB who was on the phone. When you tell a TM that you don't want to be called again, that should give you a 10-year window of marketing peace from that company. However, the law is very lenient for a company that makes mistakes, as long as the company merely demonstrates it keeps a db of "do-no-calls". If any telemarketer does not identify him or herself or the company or hangs up without such identification, the consumer can then immediately call the telco and claim a harrassing call. The telco will only reveal information to the consumer if the they excessively bitch. Usually, the telco will instead call the telemarketing company and relay the complaint and give a mild reprimand. At least, that's my experience.
Having an unlisted number doesn't help. I'd essentially war-dial exchanges and filter out disconnects, fax-lines, etc. Plus, I'd data-mine from our mainframe: if you've ever placed an ad, gotten a subscription, entered a contest, or applied for a job at the paper, and you didn't have a subscription, you were gonna get a phone call. Further, carriers, those folks who know your neighborhood better than you do, were being used to correlate the phone numbers with geography.
Of course, marketing firms always wanted to buy the dbs. It was only by arguing that everything other companies (CATV, magazines, sat-tv, ISPs, etc) sold, would take away time for readership of the newspaper that kept the dbs from being sold to the highest bidder. I am sure that other newspapers didn't reach the same conclusion.
There are a variety of federal and state laws regarding appropriate telephone usage. 1) you can't call someone repeatedly and hang up - it's called "harassment by wire" - I believe it's a state thing, unless you do it across state lines, then it's a federal thing. Call the police - have them put a trap on your line - it could be a marketer, or some shithead kid in the neighborhood making prank calls. Either way it's worth the time to save your sanity...
2) If some swine telemarketer calls you, CUT THEM OFF immediately and say "Put me on your don't call list. I don't want any calls from you or your affiliates again". They have to put you on their don't call list for 10 YEARS - this is a federal thing (Telephone Consumers Protection Act - 1996 I think). If they call you again w/in that timeframe, you can sue them for $500/incident, or if it's done w/malice then you can get them for $1500/incident (known as treble damages).
3) You can ask for a copy of the telemarketer's company "Don't Call Policy" to be mailed to you (although then you'll probably end up on some damn snail mail list) - if they don't mail it to you, advise the Federal Trade Commission and they can fine the company up to $25,000 (and usually do).
4) Asking to be put on the don't call list is supposed to be immediate, but some swineish companies (such as AT&T) will take those names and pass them to a telemarketing service to call you within the next 2 weeks - they base this on the fact that when this was all done with paper, that it used to take 2 weeks for everyone to find out about it - so they play the game that you won't complain and the benefits (for them) outweigh the potential losses - Moral: File complaints with the FTC, keep records... Sue their asses off - 90% of the time they won't even show up in court and you can get a default judgment and collect it.
4) Contacting the direct marketing association is a complete and utter waste of time. I did it and it had no discernible impact on the crap I received or the calls I got.
5) Get an unlisted, unpublished # - it's worth the cost per month not to ever end up in a list somewhere. There are morons paid to type in names from phone books all day long - if you're ever in one, you're in it forever... Get a new unpublished, unlisted #... Give it to people you want to have it...
6) Stop handing your phone # out to every bozo who wants it - the hell with radio shack. Tell them you don't want to be in their list. If they demand it, go to Digi-Key or Mouser. If you really have to have the item, give them "1060 W. Addison, Chicago, IL 60606 773-432-9843" (wrigley field's address, fake zip, fake phone #)
7) To stop the snail mail spammers, file Prohibitory Orders with the USPS. Go to the post office and ask for form 1500 - "the one that allows you to stop receiving pornographic mail". Take the form, fill it out, initial BOX 1, attach the coupons or other crap to it, sign the form, and MAIL IT with the opened coupons to the Prohibitory order processing center address on the back of the form - I only put 0.33 on the envelope no matter how much it weighs and it always gets there. Don't bother taking it to the Post Office - those clowns don't know what the hell the law is. Once the Proh. Center gets the form, they MUST issue the order. They'll send you a copy and the mailer as well. 30 days after the mailer gets the Order (usually 45 days from the date on it to allow for certified mailings) - they can't send you anything again for 5 years or it's a federal crime (prison, $10K fine, etc.). If they do, write "I received this on " across the front of the opened mailpiece, attach a note referring to the Prohibitory Order # that you were issued, and send it back to the Proh. Order. Processing Ctr. (again, 0.33 will do it...). They'll notify the mailer that they're in apparent violation, and that usually does it. Some of these scumbag marketers just can't handle the Order calling their "service" "Erotic or Pandering" and will try to refuse to comply. Keep sending the stuff to the Proh. Order Ctr. with a note - it will get taken care of. I have had two stubborn fucks - one took 6 months, one took 2 years, but they all stopped. Essentially USPS forwards the case to the local Federal DA, and the company has to respond in court as to why they're not complying with the Federal Order. They try to bitch and pitch a fit, but this right that you have was passed by Congress back in the late 60's, appealed to the US Supreme Court, and then appealed to them again - all times they were pretty specific about your rights (you can declare a dry goods catalog to be pandering if you want) - keep up the fight.
Check out www.junkbusters.org for more info on the forms...
8) Don't use those moronic "shoppers loyalty cards" (like at Jewel, Dominicks, Cosco, etc...) - they're a marketer's goldmine, and the way they work is:
1) Store raises prices...
2) Store starts this fantastic money-saving deal for "card members"
3) They get all sorts of juicy data on you prior to giving you the card - name, address, age, drivers license #, phone # (that way they can use it for "check cashing" as well).
4) You buy stuff
5) Cashier swipes your card - and you get some miniscule "discount"
Actually the "discount" is what the price was prior to it being raised (in #1) above - so the store is not actually giving you any discount, and is ripping everyone else off just that much more.
Moreover, the data of your purchases is crossreferenced with the date/time of the purchase, what you purchased last time, when you last bought this item, maybe the item last time was from a competitor - etc... you get the picture. The store then sells that data to the product manufacturer, the manufacturer's competitors, etc... They get PAID more than they give you in a discount - you get more junk mail, and essentially gain nothing. Moreover, the data can be misused in a variety of ways (someone knows when you typically shop and can 'visit' your home when you're out....)...
Stay free... work to maintain your privacy...
Damn.
If the direct marketers can find you in your stealth submarine, they're even more insidious than I thought.
If I send an e-mail to a long-lost friend who wasn't expecting it, is that "unsolicited" e-mail?
If I'm tracing my family tree and send a message to someone whom I think might be a long-lost cousin, to help confirm my data, is that "unsolicited" e-mail, just because he wasn't expecting it?
The problem with this is that we all know what makes SPAM annoying, but it is hard to define it in terms lawyers can't wriggle out of. What makes SPAM annoying is not *just* that it is unsolicited, but that it is automated in a repetative fashion, and often bulky in size. This translates into a real cost in e-mail where a message costs the recipient more than the sender. (The sender is just paying for some CPU cycles, while the recipient is paying to CPU cycles *and* secondary storage to hold the spam until it is read. This is a problem when your ISP has a limit on mailbox size.) AND also, it lies about pretending to know you, "Hello, friend, I thought you might be interested in this offer..."
I don't want to live in a world where I have to worry that I might get sued every time I send a singular, manually created message to a person who wasn't expecting it. The automated, repetative nature of SPAM is what makes it anoying, not just that it was unsolicited.
E-mail would be useless if nobody was allowed to send the first message. (The first message in any conversation must be an unsolicited one.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I like the concpt, but see two problems:
On the other hand, canned spam sounds just delicious. :-)
Another flawed strategy, the first suggestion on the main page, is to contact the DMA. Compliance with the Direct Marketing Association 'Don't call' list is purely voluntary. Few telemarketers check it (even if they're members of the DMA)...
I have to say, while this is true, I have used the DMA to reduce the amount of junk mail I've gotten. The relevant web page is at http://www.the-dma.org/con sumers/consumerassistance.html. (It's a couple short links from there to the actual forms for removing yourself from the lists.)
I noticed that they are now offering a service for removing yourself from email lists, which I haven't tried, but I can vouch for the telemarketing and mass mailing stuff, which in my case worked quite well (though not a complete solution).
...lather, rinse, and repeat... 100,000 times for each of the other telemarketers.
You might be surprised -- it took me 8 or 9 times before the calls stopped completely. I guess there's a limited number of companies/lists generating all those calls.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
(3) "Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?"
2 17&cid=261 or a document I've put together for the Federal Trade Commission concerning the Telemarketing Sales Rule at http://www.galahad.cx/FTCComment.html
" No, no and no. "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment tells us, to abridge the freedom of speech. That first amendment protects lots of things that are odious to many people - including, despite the best efforts of some wrong-headed Members of Congress, flag burning. "
Actually, yes, yes and yes. Congress passed the Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act in 1994 which then led to the Federal Trade Commission's Telemarketing Sales Rule. See my comment at http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/03/26/2210
It's frightening that someone who works for an institution with a name like "The Center for the Study of Technology and Society" doesn't realize that the First Amendment and all the legal precedents set by the Supreme Court deal with INDVIDUALS and that telemarketers are calling on the behalf of a corporation/company. The activities of a company CAN be and ARE regulated, including what they CAN and CANNOT SAY.
There are laws in place to greatly regulate telemarketing - the problem is there are some rather scary loopholes that are being abused and enforcement is patchy at best. Again, see the comment I posted earlier.
PS. Does anyone know how to contact Cliff (Or if you're reading this Cliff, email me!)? - I'd like to talk to him about some of this.
The Constitution names the rights of individuals, not companies/corporate entities. The right to free speech is an individual right. A corporation cannot claim that they can sell a product as "100% Pure" whenever it contains impurities because they have "a right to free speech". That's why the FTC regulates what telemarketers can and can't do. IF these regulations are enforced or not is a totally different story though.
Thanks for the calm response...sorry my original post wasn't as well...yesterday was a bad day. 4 exams in 2 days and no sleep can do that to a person.
And I realize my name and phone number are in my comments to the FTC that I posted the link to. I thought long and hard about removing them, but when I submit my final comment to the FTC I'm going to include my contact information and they post all the comments they consider onto the web as well, so it's going to be out there either way. Plus I never answer my phone - I let the answering machine get it and if I'm around and it's not someone whose voice I recognize I just push "Stop".
My research into telemarketing has been somewhat of a crash course (Although I'd like to consider myself fairly good at these things - once I'm -finally- out of school I hope to have a job with a foundation such as the one you work with, perhaps) and you'll have to forgive me, I'm having a hard time separating my feelings from the issue so I'm not exactly being a totally unbiased, rational person about it all.
I agree with you that laws designed for computers, DDoS attacks, etc should not be used to fight telemarketers and vice versa - both issues are already being confused enough (For instance, most people cry out to the FCC about telemarketing violations whenever the FTC actually has just as much or more jurisdiction over these such things. And I don't know if I'd want EITHER organization dealing with computers), mixing them together couldn't help anything.
I think the point I was trying to make in my post was that a lot of people are claiming that the telemarketers have the "right to free speech" meaning "They can say whatever they want!" and then these people are using this to claim that there is some first amendment protection against the regulation of the telemarketing industry. As you point out, this isn't true because the actions of the industry (including and especially the calls they make and how they conduct them) are regulated as actions, not as speech. You just put it in much more clear and well-thought out terms than I did! Like I said, yesterday was a rough day and overall I've had some problems (which I think are understandable, to an extent) separating myself from the issue. That's one of the reasons I'm letting my comments to the FTC "cool" before I go over them and finish them up and submit them (The deadline is a week from Thursday - April 27th, to be exact if anyone wants to tell the FTC anything about the Telemarketing Sales Rule...I'd figure a lot more people would've commented on such a central piece of regulation concerning telemarketing! In the first forum I'd say 90% of the participants were representing the telemarketing industry. Things aren't looking good.).
And thanks for the polite response. Hopefully I'll manage to find the time soon to put together a more cohesive and informative page on this issue soon.
Oh, and if you're got a second, drop me an email (you have my address from that FTC comment I posted). Thanks.
Why not check out vgetty and roll yer own? ;)
Your Working Boy,
I think there's really something to this idea. One of the other neat tricks is that the government can also prosecute non-paying spammers for tax evasion. :) Federal penitentiary, baby! They'd have to do it, or otherwise the law would be meaningless. The only problem that I can see there is that while the government is getting rich (heh) off the spam-tax money, that still doesn't make the cost to the end-victims of the spam go away.
I don't believe that any law can or ever will be written that does not become draconian the moment it is passed. The reason is that language does not have set definitions and set meanings. Yes, we have dictionaries to give us meanings, but not only do those definitions change from dictionary to dictionary, but they change by their intended usage.
Laws are often written similiar to programming code, and thus are a pain in the ass to understand because of the natural ambiguities in languages. All languages are intended to describe a perspective acurately, and I have yet to see a human language that can be used omnispectively (as law is often ment).
To get to the point; laws are (or should be) guidelines. If it were to be strictly written what is and/or is not harassment, humans will adapt. What is considered harassment may be abandoned, what is not will be perverted into harassment. I can easily imagine the common practice in ten years for companies to pay people to go out on the street and prattle on to people about their products, when conversation is the only form of communication not dictated to be harassment. I do not want to see a law passed against uninitiated conversation.
A similar thing occurs now with marriages. People who get married for traditional reasons, do so to concecrate and create a love or a bonding that barely exists, and expect the marriage to make it real. The law does this no more than other laws do.
-- Daedalius, your friendly neighborhood labyrinth maker
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Normally there's about 50 Volts DC on the phone line before you pick up the handset.
When a call is coming in, a rapidly varying signal around 70 to 100 Volts is placed on the line.
This either activates mechanical ringers in older phones or triggers a detection circuit in newer phones that in turn triggers another circuit that rings or chirps or whistles or chimes or whatever.
That's why not every phone in the house rings in unison.
I'm not sure a modem is going to be capable of producing a signal that high in voltage at a high enough current level (think of it as trying to use high water pressure to pump a lot of water at once into a system of pipes and trying to do it with only a squirt gun) to actually cause electromagnetic coils to move a 3 inch rod with a weight on one end back and forth between 2 bells with enough force to cause the weight to strike the bells hard enought to make them ring loudly.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
This is from one I got the other day
Subject: CABLE TV
Date: Mon, 17 Apr 2000 02:25:34 -0700
From: cabletv4u1@yahoo.com
To: cabletv4u1@yahoo.com
I have no connection with Yahoo. You can see what the address of my account is right up there by my user name. I expect occasional spam with that address in the "To:" line. Why do I get stuff addressed to addresses other than my own, addresses that don't even include the correct domain name?
Here's another example
Subject: As seen on tv
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 00 22:41:44 EST
From: easymoney@earthdome.com
To: Friend@public.com
and another
Subject: Expose your business to the Internet
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 01:54:47
From: lippy222_1999@yahoo.com
To: <mecki.colongne@t-online.de>
How does this stuff get through?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
If you use capital (uppercase) letters, like this--<A HREF="http://www.jackpot.com"> jackpot.com</A>, Slashdot likes it better. :-)
Makes it come out like this-- jackpot.com
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
They said it, I didn't.
I suppose what could be done is run the phone line into the modem, then run a patch cord from that modem's other RJ-11 jack to one of the jacks on an old 2400 modem modified as I'm about to describe, and plug the house's telephone system into the other jack on the modified modem.
Take the old modem, strip off the parts, build on a touch-tone detector, a ring generator, and an off-hook detector. When the non-telemarketer caller presses "1", the touch-tone detector would activate a relay connecting the jack the house phones were plugged into to the ring generator, feeding the ringing voltage (or actually the current caused by the ringing voltage) into the house phone lines. Then, when someone in the house picks up one of those phones, the off-hook detector would cut out that relay and activate another one that would connect the house phone jack to the jack patched to the answering modem. That same off-hook detector would activate that relay and make that same connection whenever someone picked up one of the house phones in order to call out.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Unfortunately this only works if you are the first person to answer among the 4 or 8 or however many that that one telemarketer employee is calling.
If someone else answers first, the telemarketer talks to them and everybody else gets a dead line.
That's why we never answer until the ring just before the ring our answering machine picks up on.
We get a lot of calls that ring once or twice and then stop.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Adrian owes somebody money and that's a debt collection service calling you.
At some point there was some connection between Adrian and your phone number.
There is no Mrs. Jones, that's a legal psuedonym and there are probably several different people at that company authorized to represent themselves as Mrs. Jones.
They're trying to find out where Adrian is or might be, so that they know where to send the sheriff.
I am not qualified or licensed to dispense legal advice (or illegal advice for that matter), but if you have a phone number for these people, tell the phone company and the cops that they are harrassing you.
Or pretend to be Adrian and talk to them until you find out who they are.
Tell them you have their money in cash and to come right over to pick it up.
Have a cop waiting to have a word with whoever shows up.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I'm curious, if I was attacked with a DoS and somehow could find the offender and reciprocate a DoS or other attack to bring down the attacking system could I plead "Self-Defense"???
// Zarf //
Similarly, If I got a telemarketing call... and reciprocated a telemarketing call or another attack to "bring down" the "attacking" telemarketer could I plead "Self-Defense"???
-
[signature]
I've gotten exactly one quality, well-targetted telemarketing call. I had called in "sick of" (work, rather than sick with something). About 11:30 that morning the phone rings. I sit there in agony, pretty sure something at work blew up, and finally decide to take the call (I have vociemail, so I can't screen calls effectively). I answer, and it's my phone company, offering to sign me up for Caller ID. Quickest sale they ever had.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Yes those DDoS attacks are malicious. Did you see that the MPAA has been hit over the past few days? Zdnet article What a shame. It's sad when bad things happen to good people :)
Ok, folks, yes, you can tell telemarketers to take you off their list...and, like as not, they'll argue with you about it.
But...up till about a year and a half ago, I was getting 3-4 (or more) tele-bloody-marketer calls per week. Then, from somewhere in the depths of my magpie collection (memory), I remembered a Magic Phrase, and started using it, as did my son. These days, I *may* get 3-4 call per *month*.
The magic phrase? "I request and require that you take me off your telemarketing list". The "request and require" seems to be a serious legal formula. As a test, I tried the usual, "take me off", and had a woman argue with me...*then* I said, "request & require"...and it was as though someone had flipped a switch, and she *instantly* went into a canned speech, "blah, blah, it will take from 10 days to 2 weeks to..., if you ever want to get back on, please call blah, blah, thank you, sorry to bother you", and she hung up.
So - try it, you'll like it.
mark "42"
We can write all the laws we want and get our Senators and Representatives to pass all the legislation possible without restricting our personal liberty.
However, the real point is the fact that the federal authorities have limited numbers of people to enforce any set of laws. After all, how many companies pollute without fear because they know that the government does not have the people to enforce the current EPA laws already on the books. Hell, the NRA made a campaign out of the fact the Feds do not have the resources or for that matter the will to enforce current gun laws.
Can we really expect protection from the same government we consistently point to as being out of touch and clueless when it comes to technical matters. Just try to get your local law enforcement or even the Feds via the FBI to take on any sort of electronic crime. Unless a big e-commerce site is hacked or the cops find a group of kiddie pornsters to bust they are not going to be forward thinking in enforcing these sort of laws.
The government is too clueless to protect us and the law enforcement is too far behind the times to try. We will have to fight the battles ourselves.
ACK
Subject says it all.
This sig is false.
Yeah, except they're catching on to the fact that people have caught on to the two second delay. I got put through by a predictive dialer almost instantly the other day.
(Strangely enough, it was the phone company trying to sell me caller id and other blocking services... At least in CA, PacBell is one of the worst telemarketing bastards of the lot.)
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
if no one ever bought anything from a cold-caller, if no one ever took those wal-mart coupons from the wednesday mailer to the store, and if no one _EVER_ responded to a spam email..
it would all just dissapear.
aint gonna happen. too many stupid people out there value saving a buck or two more than the collective freedom to be left the fuck alone.
throw your tv away, don't click on banner ads, and never say 'yes' to a salesperson.
--
blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
you don't pay for incoming calls, unless your'e on a cell phone, which i don't think they're calling at all. They pay for their connection charges, for 800 numbers for complaints, etc...
None of those costs exist with spam... it's a free marketing tool, and because it's free, it's being abused to no end.
The only reason that you might be getting 15+ calls a day on a regular basis, at home, is if you're actually ordering stuff from them. If you're ordering, then obviously they're selling you something you want, so you shouldn't complain. If you don't order, your name and number WILL drift by the way side pretty quickly.
If these are workplace phone calls, while they still might be annoying, I don' think they should count in this conversation. After all, you're getting paid to do whatever, including answering the phone. It only takes 15 seconds to realize the call isn't work related. If you're losing much more productivity than that, that's your managers problem, your problem, but not the telemarketers problem.
My opinion.
So, if it takes 5 seconds on a Celeron box this year, (720 emails/hr) .625 seconds next year and (5760 emails/hr) .3125 seconds the year after that (11520 emails/hr)
It'll take 2.5 seconds on an Athlon box this year, (1440 emails/hr)
but only 1.25 seconds next year and (2880 emails/hr)
then only
then only
and pretty soon we're right back to where we started. Never mind the fact that there are hardware accelerators and SMP machines, both of which would be worth while if the mail was generating a profit, and the fac that you'd need to teach every one in the world how to use PGP that wanted to contact you. I tried to get my mom to use PGP, but she was completely put off by it as being too intrusive. I can only imagine my cousins grappling with computer problems, trying to email me, only to find their cries for help bouncing back at them...
But in the end, you'd inconvience everyone except the spammers, who would just have to spend a little money on the problem. It's not like anyone's sitting there keying in data. The machine's just running. And it doesn't cost them any thing more to leave their computer if their computers on 24/7 already.
It'll cost you money if the judge decides in the spammers favor, though... Generally, you'd have to pay their legal bill if you sue and lose. Otherwise, anyone could bankrupt anyone by just filing lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit.
Well, the US Post Office would get an exemption on the grounds that junk mail subsidises other mail (or at least it should; I'm not sure if it's really not the other way around).
:)
It is the other way around, unfortunatelly. Look at your bills. Most are stamped with a lesser amount than the cost of a stamp. This I have no HUGE problem with - except that they always include crap and advertisements in the envelope, along with my bills. They OUGHT to be mailed by weight, at a high rate. Get rid of those ads and credit card 'checks' at 20% APR.
But, the junk mail that I get - mostly from Microsoft, since I 'accidentally' registered some of their products years ago - costs pennies to send. If it cost a full $0.32 (Soon to be $0.33 BTW) then there would be less of it. I keep a PO box in addition to my home address. The PO is what is reflected on my registrations and other 'non-personal' correspondence. I get - I shit you not - a pound of junk each week; all nice, high-bond, five color, glossy paper too.
If mass-mailed junk cost $0.50 to send, you can be damned sure that it would be opt-in only, at least in most cases...
The only way to truly regulate businesses is by making it un-profitable to do something that you find un-desirable. They can afford to spend years in court appeals, after all - since that's a tax write-off, not an 'operating expense'. It's about economics, not principles.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
US West makes money on both sides; pretty damn sleazy.
[rant]
It's just as sleazy as the Federal, State and optionally Local governments, charging you tax on your income, and then again on your spending. And one more time on any substantial property you bought with your (already taxed) money.
This being tax season and all... Something's rotten in the state of Denmark, and it ain't all that cheeze. If 10% was good enough for God, it should be good enough for Uncle Sam!
[/rant]
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
True... not all spam is free speach. Especially if you have already told someone not to spam you. We already have laws about direct marketing. Why should email spam be special? Why do we need more laws? Why should someone who sends some spam get a huge fine or prison sentence when all they did was waste a few seconds of a bunch of people's time, when someone who sends junkmail has used up millions of dollars worth of natural resources that cannot be replaced? Repeat after me: "No one feels sorry for me because I have to hit the delete button in my email program."
http://overwhelmed.org
The key word here is ... "Yahoo account"...
Do you know for sure that Yahoo hasn't sold your name to every telemarketer on earth? I've had free accounts (at ureach.com) for months and I've yet to get one email... My hotmail account gets a lot only because i use it as my spam account. My private, personal account gets none, and I've even used it to post to listservs...
http://overwhelmed.org
How come so many hacker types are so pro-freedom [free beer, free speach, f*ck MS cause it's not free], but when it comes to spammers they forget about the first amedment and start calling for lynchings? Free speach isn't a utopia. You have to take the good with the bad. Granted, if you tell someone to stop spamming/calling you they should, but I am VERY fearfull of the gov't making a lot of anti-spamming laws. They are the folks that came up with the CDA after all. Why do most hackers want the gov't to stay completely out of their business except when it comes to spam???
http://overwhelmed.org
Share and enjoy.
If you despise telemarketers, attempt the following techniques. First, pay attention when you answer the phone. Anytime there is a 2-3 second pause, then a click before someone answers, you are talking to a telemarketer, so prepare to attempt one of the following tactics:
1. If they are trying to sell you a credit card, pretend to be extremely interested, but then ask them if it's ok that you're an illegal alien. They'll politely explain that they can't give you a card, then you yell at them for discrimination and hang up.
2. If they sound like an inexperienced telemarketer reading from a script (at least 2 out of 3 fit this profile), wait until they say something you can question them on, then interrupt them mid-sentence and ask them a question about the product they are trying to sell you. Pretend to be interested at first, and ask them simple questions. The odds are they will be completely flustered and unable to answer your questions because you aren't following along with the script they have. Then tell them they don't even understand the product they're trying to sell, and hang up.
3. Answer the phone as follows: "Diga! Mis pastanas les gustan el Judo!" If they don't know spanish, they will hang up because they don't think you'll understand them. If they do know spanish, they will hang up because they'll think you're insane.
4. Many telemarketers start with, "Hi, may I speak to Mr. or Mrs. Smith?" Answer "No." This confuses them, pause for a little, then hang up.
5. Politely ask them if they could hold for a second, then hang up.
6. Pretend to be really interested. Make your voice melodramatic as if you are practically having an orgasm over the product they are selling. Wait until at least 5 minutes into their script, pause, and say, "Wait, could you start over again from the beginning? I didn't get that." Then set the phone down and go do something else. Come back in about 5 minutes, say, "Hello," and see if they're still there. Keep statistics on this and then graph your success rate.
Yup, the situation with the TV licence is the same.
As for the cable channels, though, while it's true that I'm paying for the connection, the more channels I get, the more I pay, so in a sense, I am paying for the channels. It's not a great increase (unless I choose some of the "premium" channels, like the Sky Movie and Sport channels - I don't know whether or not they carry ads, but I assume so), but it's still more money for more channels.
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
This is also how TV works (you can get free TV with ads, or premium/rental services without).
Not in the UK, you can't...
Regardless of what you use it for, if you own equipment capable of receiving a television broadcast, you must own a TV Licence (at a cost of ~100stlg/year). True, 2 (out of 5) of our "standard" (ie non-cable, non-satellite) channels are ad-free, but the rest most certainly are not.
On top of that, I have cable TV with one of the UK's larger providers, which (with the selection of channels I get) costs me approx 20stlg/month - and every channel carries adverts.
An opt-in system for advertising would be nice, but I can't see it being effective. Qualcomm recently released the new version of Eudora Pro with an additional option - Light, Pro, or Sponsored. In Sponsored mode, you get all the features of the Pro version, "paid for" by a little advert about 1 inch square in the bottom left corner of the window. Unfortunately, it still nags you to register it every so often... I can see even the best opt-in advertising schemes being the same; pay more not to get adverts, but get pestered to accept them (which, of course, is just advertising for the opt-in scheme...)
Cheers,
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
On the other hand, the cost of sending email is negligible.
Spam would be a lot more manageable if it cost them $.33 for each spam they sent out.
Now all we have to do is find a way to charge spammers.
PeterM
My house has anonymous call rejection. You have to dial *82 to un-anonymize yourself, so your number can show up on our caller ID. (Our provider is Bell Atlantic).
>Is this rude to the telemarketers? Fuck 'em;
:)
I did telemarketing for a while (a bit of a messed up operation where my boss ended up running from the police)..
The short story is the operation was lagit at first but degraded over time... eventually his boss showed up with the police...
It's NOT rude to hang up on a telemarketer...
He isn't going to get a sale from you so it's rude of you to waist his time.
Now if he is presistent then he is being rude...
A lot of telemarketters arn't trainned to be polite instead they try to latch on. Thats the wrong way around things. It works but it's the least effective method.
Ideally you make the sales on the bulk of calls.
Just like spam....
Spammers however don't hang on to people... They spam over 10,000 e-mail addresses and get almost 100 replys..
Telemarketting gets a bit of a better return rate...
So yes... slam the phone down.. ideally say "don't call me again" and hang up. What ever you do DO NOT let the telemarketer monopolise your time.. it's just polite
PS. You develup a thick skin affer a while... The job sucks and it's even worse when your boss turns into a con artist.... I cought more flack becouse of him... stupid idiot
I don't actually exist.
Yeah a lot of telemarketers don't get proper trainning...
Nither do telemarketter shop managers...
The job is horrable...
Oh amd if you THINK your hurtting the guy on the phone? Look you can drive him to quit and that is a GOOD thing... he can take the experence and get a real job... or even a better crummy one
The job stinks horrably.. I mean it...
I don't actually exist.
If you tell them to remove you from their list and they call back twice more in a 52 week period you can claim damages of up to $500. Go to Junkbusters and learn your rights.
I mention my rights, mention the Act that protects them, and ask to be removed. I don't get calls back. I've learned that the key is to let them know that *you* know your rights. Otherwise they'll assume you don't and continue to call
Junkbusters has already been mentioned, but I wanted to add my two cents. Before I started using its techniques, I literally got 30-40 telemarketing calls PER DAY. Now, I typically get no more than two per week. Those I do get don't last more than five seconds. This has taken me three months to get to this point and has been more effective than ANYTHING else I've tried.
You can say "Scream into the phone, hold them on the line so it costs them money, etc." but my time is valuable too and the callers are just $5/hour bozos who are just trying to earn a living. They don't deserve to have their eardrums shattered.
The instant I realize it's a sales call (usually when they ask for "Mr. so-and-so"), I ask if they are a telemarketer. DON'T wait for them to stop talking, because they won't. When they answer "yes", just say "put me on your do not call list" and then HANG UP. Easy. Five seconds. You're back to your dinner before it gets cold and you don't get called back.
Folks, there aren't that many telemarketing companies out there. It's not hard to get them to stop calling.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Now that this comes up, I've totally forgotten where I saw this. It was a film or TV show where someone got a telemarketing call and answered with,
... I thought not. Bye.".
:o)
"I'm sorry, I'm a bit busy right now. Tell you what, can I have your home phone number and I'll call you later to discuss it
I've been willing a telemarketer to call me ever since so I could try it
http://www.pe.net/~bidstrup/phone.htm
I can't believe they have the nerve to call people at midnight.
....
More than likely it wasn't midnight where he was, and he didn't know where you were
It's pretty common to base telemarketing (or phone support, for that matter) either in one place for the entire US, or in Ireland (from which you can get both Europe and the eastern US at reasonable times).
"Looks like a telemarketer needs a comb-over" *ka-click!*
"It's not Sam! It's the head of a multimillion dollar telemarketing conglomerate." "Oh yeah, Sam is the other annoying guy.."
"A robot has left a small town in ruins! Among the ruins, a pet shop where only a few bags of alfalfa hay were stolen, a Spencer's gift shop where only a Baywatch poster was stolen, and a telemarketer office. There were no survivors at the telemarketer office."
Do commercials block the possible "important" shows on TV? Do web banners keep you from surfing? DOS attacks are a denial of service. Unless a telemarketer is calling you 100 times a day and preventing you from using your phone, DOS attacks and telmarketing are not similar.
There are several things you can do to stop telemarketers from calling:
1. Call your local telephone provider and ask for anonymous call blocking
2. Contact the DMA (http://www.the-dma.org/) and ask to be placed on their do not call list. This list is used by all of their members (the majority of telemarketers)
Telemarketing, advertising, etc. are the price we pay for living under a capitalist system. Forcing more laws onto any industry only serves to curtail our own rights.
;)
Play Well
Maybe the system would be configurable
If you are serious, get one of those phone-center cards/software, put it into your PC and let it pick up all the calls on the first ring. I am sure you can make it do all kinds of things including "No solicitors", "If you are calling X press 1", and "Kill all the lawyers".
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Would it be possible for the phone company to offer a service that either before the number rings or immediately after a connection has been established a computerized voice says "No solicitors"?
ROTFL! And no barristers as well, I suppose?
Look up the meaning of the word "solicitor" in a dictionary, especially British usage. And while I agree that this could be a good thing, prefacing all your phone conversations with such a statement... (yeah, I know, Carthage must be destroyed and all that).
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Hehe.. since I got a digital answering machine, I get a lot of telemarketers who come on after a very short message of mine. I get like 2 messages a day that say somethings like this " .. Hello.... Hello... .... Hello... " hehe. I think they have to upgrade...
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
This law is a bone thrown to consumers by legislators afraid of being seen as doing nothing. I get several calls (many just hang-ups) a day, and haven't the time or resources to take them all to court. Since they don't use caller-ID-able systems (most T-1 lines don't provide for this) I can't track them down. And Even if they agree to remove me from the list, it can take months, during which time I can end up on the list again from another source.
This country needs a comprehensive federal privacy protection law. The states cannot be trusted to do this, many of them want to sell you up the telemarketer river by selling your driver's license info.
I've found the requests to not be called work pretty much ... also getting your name / phone / address added to the Direct Marketing Associations "DO NOT CALL" list helps also.
... now I rarely get them at all.
:(
Last year this time I got 2-3 spam calls / night
I still can't get Columbia House to stop sending me spam snail-mail though
Maybe 2 or 3 in the 11 months since I moved here. Never got a landline, I have a cellphone and cablemodem.
The worst, though, is BMG Music (dis)Service. I have some coupon coming to me for 3 free if I pick one at regular price over the phone. Fine, I'll do that then get the F out of dodge and kill that useless membership. They've called me 4 times, every time either at work or in my truck. I tell them to call back after 6PM, they keep calling during the day.
I don't get much SPAM either. The couple I've gotten, however, have been very, very eerie, sent to my cable email address, which I do not distribute. And, of course, forged to appear as though FROM my cable address.
This is especially annoying if, like me, you use a voicemail service! Most of my voicemails are 5 seconds of "background telemarketing warehouse" noise (a million "Hello, Mr. Jones? My name is..." in the background)
Part of the Second American Revolution!
"No, no and no. "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment tells us, to abridge the freedom of speech"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that it is already illegal to send spam-faxes. Since Spam email has the same characteristics as spam faxes (i.e. the recipient pays to receive the spam) I don't see why they shouldn't be treated the same in the law.
IANAL, but the other day I was phoning a lady and making a modem noise with my nose to achieve manual DoS, I thought - "hey, is this legal?"
Hotnutz.com - Funny
No, you can't sue spammers/telemarketers on the same grounds as ddosing kiddies. I can understand the analogy tough. In both cases, you are flooded with "packets" from various sources. Remember tough, in the case of a ddos, there is a single person pulling the trigger with intent to harm, while telemarketers act independently of each others (and there is no intent to harm, but maybe that's a point to argue about ;).
The law against unsolicited commercial faxes passed because it wastes paper you have to actually pay for yourself, so it creates costs for you. Since an incoming phonecall or letter doesn't cost you anything the general consensus seems to be that it's ok (I don't agree with that, my time is worth something too).
Now, here in Europe I have to pay by the minute for my internet connection, I think I could use a similar reasoning against spam-mail.
I am just about to finish reading Database Nation by Simson Garfinkel, and I think the author makes some very good points about possible solutions. There is a very good case to be made for strong governement regulation, strict laws and heavy penalties here. Industry self-regulation simply doesn't work.
The more important issue behind the annoyance of receiving unsollicited mail, however, is companies aggregating large amounts of data about people and selling them. This should be forbidden if there is no prior approval by the concerned person.
I strongly believe that trying to be clever is detrimental to your health. -- Linus Torvalds
Or the more fun approach might be what my former roommate used to do. He had this annoying little hold button that plugs into the line between the phone and the wall. While activated, it plays a really bad beepy version of Jingle Bells. Whenever a telemarketer called, he would listen to their spiel, then ask them to hold on while he looked for his credit card. He'd put on the annoying hold music, then check back every 5 minutes or so to say that he almost found his credit card, just another minute... You'd be surprised how long they would hang on, thinking they had a sale...
Say hello to zMac.
This story inspired me to improve my system last night. I knew my modem (USR 56k voice modem) has caller id support, but hadn't bothered getting it to work before. So, after a hacking session, I got it working with my "answering machine" scripts. Now, if a call comes in as Private or Unavailable, the computer/answering machine script picks up after one ring. Otherwise it keeps ringing (til the standard 4 rings, after which the computer picks up anyway) and I'll know it's probably a "real" call so I'll pick it up myself.
I'm running a perl script under Linux that controls a "voice modem control" program I found on the net a while back. It's just a custom hack job that fits my needs, but if you're interested in seeing what I've done, let me know...
Future improvements may be specific greetings for certain people, an alternate greeting for blocked/anonymous calls, etc.
Say hello to zMac.
Hmmm, sounds like a similar trick I've heard of to use against spammers with valid return email addresses (note: I do not personally recommend this at all!): instead of trying to mail bomb them yourself, let others do the work. Sign them up to your favorite 100+ or so high traffic mailing lists...
Say hello to zMac.
Not related to telemarketing, but an idea for filtering spam. Whenever you post a message, just use your normal email address. But also spread around a junk email address with specific instructions to not send any email to it, because it will never get read. Of course, spammers won't get that message and send you mail anyways. Now, unless someone is extremely stupid, the ONLY mail you should ever get to that junk email address is spam.
Write a filter that takes each message from the junk list and compares it to messages as they're recieved by your good address. If they match, then kill the message before you ever read it.
It won't kill all spam at once, but should significantly whittle down the amount you have to end up reading.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
I used to have problems with telemarketers, but
:)
not any longer. I have caller id. I won't answer any calls that show up anonymous, unavailable, or a company name I'm not familiar with. I just let my answering machine screen those calls. Most telemarketers won't bother to leave a message, so that solves that problem. If its someone important, well, they'll leave a message or it wasn't really all that important, now was it?
In fact, telemarketers can be fun sometimes if you have some time to kill. I always have a good day when I know that I've tied a telemarketer up on the phone for 30 minutes to an hour, and end up not buying anything. They tend to work off of commission, so keep them on the phone by really racking up a nice bill.
When I was in college and got my first credit cards, I got MANY MANY calls for additional services on my cards. One lady who called had the most obnoxious voice, and was trying to sell me some type of travel package. I kept her on the phone for 2 hours asking her obscure questions that her prepared scripts didn't answer and kept her constantly going back to her supervisor for assistance, all the while I kept conferencing my friends in on the phone call because it was so damn funny.
Just remember, do whatever you can to demoralize them, keep their spirits down, convince them to pursue a more respectable line of work. Telemarketers are usually people with no appreciable skills (they do read prepared scripts, after all) who get lured in by the money. Their only saving grace is that for every 20 people that hang up on them, there awaits a sucker who will slurp up everything they're selling. Just make sure that isn't enough for them to keep their job.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Lucky you, not getting much spam. I, on the other hand, get at least one new "weekly adult mailing" per week claiming I "opted in" on one of their web sites, which is bullshit. They invariably have a phony address where I can go to stop the mailings (i.e. confirm that they sent to a valid email address which someone reads). I filter 'em out, and new ones keep coming.
Yes, correct. Unfortunately for said war-dialer, 800 numbers keep track of the phone #'s used to call them. Said war-dialer was sued successfully, and had to pay for the cost of his calls, IIRC.
Keep in mind that is a form of DoS, and is wrong. If it isn't wrong, then neither is spam...
James
I was called again anyhow, and repeated my request to be removed from their list. They called yet again, at which point I let the guy have an earful.
I haven't had another call since, and it was a strangely therapeutic way of handling the situation. :^)
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
while this may help (but probably won't), a more helpful and effective tactic (as many people have already mentioned) is to have them put you on their "DO NOT CALL" or "DO NOT SOLICIT" list.
the reason is that direct marketers are required by law to keep a list of people they cannot call for at least ten years, but there are no laws respecting their management of lists of people they can call. so if they take you off "their list", there's nothing to stop them from using another list with your number later, or from putting your number back on their list.
I used to be polite to telemarketers.
I used to say: "Please remove my name and number from your list."
After all, they are only doing their job, right?
That was before I got a job... and that job suddenly expanded into a job that would sometimes required me to make unsoliticed phone calls. I refused. I don't have that job now. It gave me one thing that's stuck in my mind:
I'd rather starve to death, jobless, than to be the asshole on the giving end of a telemarting call.
So now, I'm not polite to telemarketers. I don't respect the fact that it's their job. I don't care. If someone is willing to be a telemarketer, than they'd better be willing to put up with me. I do my best to make telemarketers feel worse than the lowliest humans. If they hang up, start crying, or start yelling back, then I know I am doing a good job.
The more of them I can make quit their jobs, the less of them there are in the world.
I don't feel sorry for telemarketers.
Besides, it's great stress relief to curse a telemarketer as the spawn of evil when they interrupt your fine dinner, or episode of Star Trek: Voyager, after you've just had a long day of work, and are trying to relax.
No pity for telemarketers.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
My DSL interupts their computers but their machines never connect us. They won't connect us until I press a button on my phone. Funny but annoying. I wonder if there might be some hack to exploit this behavior.
My telemarketing type calls have gone from a few a day when I first moved into my home, to none. Really. Not one in a month. Give it a try. Takes a while to work for all telemarketers but becomes a long term permanent solution.
There should be a way to make the spammers pay for resources used to download their shit. Isn't there something like this for cell phones where the user pays just for air time?
I actually order their crap. Then I return it. When they ask why I say "I always do that to people who call me at home to sell something". It wastes less of my time trying to keep them on the phone, and it probably costs them more money. I don't get as many calls as I used to get.
Well, I think it might be difficult to have laws that block both, or treat both (DDoS and telemarketing) the same way.
DDoS is malicious traffic with the intent to disable/damage your services.
Telemarketers just want you to buy something! Although you might classify that as inherently malicious, it's not, especially not on the same scale as DDoS attacks. Sure, you may not like telemarketers and calls during dinner, but do you want to be arrested 5 years from now because you accidentally dialed the wrong number?
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
Maybe we can't target the spam companies, but we can target their customers. They have to mention the product somewhere in the spam (otherwise, what's the point?), and we can use that to track down the company who commissioned the spam. There will always be more spammers, but if we get the message to execs that spam doesn't pay, maybe it will stop.
I'm pretty sure they have given all that info out 8^) That's why I don't use it - it just collects spam. Sort of an experiment now - I was going to use it as my newsgroup e-mail spam collector, but went a different route. Now it just collects spam and doesn't get used. Oh well. Not my drive space ;-)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I opened a yahoo mail account about a year ago. Never sent any mail from it, and I never told anyone the address or posted it anywhere. I only check about once every month or two, but I get *plenty* of mail, usually MAKE MONEY FA$T and that junk, though I managed to attract a couple of more risque mails with my black-hole address...
Any spam e-mail that comes with an invalid reply-to address should be considered harassment... I've had a few at one of my real addresses lately that have invalid 'remove' links in them (apparently I need to be running Outlook express w/ embedded javascript or some nonsense), and the reply address is bogus. I promptly sent the entire trail to abuse@ and postmaster@ each domain that was specified...
I'm calling my governor (a well-known ex-pro wrestler), and having him sponsor a bill - the chair for spammers!!!
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Ummm... yes, it's funny that it happens---but it does happen. Annoying, eh?
----
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Nah, they should just pay me. Whether I'm a spam target or not. That way we solve the which government problem!
Laws will not be written to stop these types of calls, even if they could. These companies have lobby groups, the people don't. They would toss around enough $$$ if laws started to form.
-shrug-
I have the great joy (ahem) of working for an association of marketing researchers who spend a lot of their time trying to explain to the world that they are different from telemarketers. And in some ways they are -- when they call to bother you they aren't trying to see you anything, just bother you. There are some repercussions from this. Although you can ask to be put on a do-not-call list and be spared telemarketers, these lists don't actually apply to market researchers.
Within the Marketing Research Association there is an ethics committee that sets policy for the association which member companies have to uphold.
If the idea that you can be called at 8:30 by some guy who wants your opinion about some inane thing even though you are on a do-not-call list (or privacy issues and who has access to demographic info about you) bugs you, you can, well, spam the MRA.
The forums are one place to vent.
So is the general e-mail.
"This newsletter is an opt in adult newsletter that has been sent to this email address as requested , if you have this in error then please remove yourself from the list immediately.The links contained in this email link to a hardcore adult website , if you are offended by this material please delete this email after you have removed yourself from the email list from the last link on the page." I get these at least 3 times a day. I always click on the link to REMOVE myself (often it doesn't exist) and they keep on sending, I'd just block the sender but the entire email address changes on a daily basis. Please don't sign me up for any more porn u trolls!
We have unsolicited commercial call bans on faxes and phone calls after certain hours which do apply in Washington State. And the recent ruling overturning our spam law is under appeal - our Attorney General has a very good track record in winning these cases.
...
Hey, we can regulate billboards for cigarette ads, according to the US Supreme Court - I'm sure we'll get spammers soon.
Who gives a flying hoot about the First Amendment anyway, it's subordinated by the EU's rights of privacy and it says nothing about the Internet.
Get with the 21st Century
Will in Seattle
Hahahhaa. This is my first post, but whats really fun is to ask them for more information and let the phone go off the hook for a while until they hang up.
In an issue of 2600, particularly the latest one 17:1, there was a telemarketer that wrote in and said that they CAN'T remove you from their lists because they don't have the lists or something. I don't know.
I'm not sure if most of you know this because I'm 13 and this is my first post, but telemarketers use this machine that dials about 20 numbers at once and the first to pick up is talked to, and the others just pick up and it's like nobody is there. We get these all the time, where we pick up "Hello?" and nobody answers.
Fun.
The last time I was called by a telemarketer, they were more persistant. The phone would start to ring around 9 am, (Anyone who knows me knows I will not get up at 9 to answer the phone) and ring every 2-3 hours, until around 7 pm.
After three days of this I finally answered and waited for the telemarketer to come on the line and said "no thanks." and that solved the problem.
Now if only the computer would take the hint when I don't answer the phone ~15 times in a row.
Warding off telemarketers AND lawyers with one statement?!?! "Killer app" anyone? :-)
I find it alot more fun to be friendly and interested in whatever they're interested in selling me then quickly say, "Oh, hold on a second...". Then put the phone down and walk away. You'd be surprised at how long they hang on for ya, my record so far is 17 minutes and he was furious at me when I explained and started laughing at him!
;)
They deserve whatever grief you can give 'em, and wasting their time is 'bout the only way I know how. ('Cept for the laughing at 'em bit, but that's just a bonus
- "When I say dance, you'd best DANCE motherf*cker!" -Violent Femmes
Funny you mention US West for their telemarkter thing. For the years I've had my unlisted/published number, most of the telemarkterc calls I recieved are from US West trying to shove their CustomChoice plan down my throat.
IANAL but I think this only happens when the judges feals the law suit is pointless. I suspect that it depends on the situation, but there are a few things you can do to help:
:)
1) explain it very clearly that they agree to pay you $500 dollars whenever they transfer your name to anyone outside of their immediate company nd you bank or send you spam themelves. I would say that you need to attach a cover letter and write the message on the related documents (like the check).
2) explain that they may call you to discuss the matter further, i.e. you might be willing to return the item you purchesed (and get you money back) to remove yourselve from their spam list, but that they must request this. I'm pretty shure that contracts need to be negotiable, i.e. they shold not be required to change their whole database just because a clerk was too stupid to read the fine print.
3) You must be able to show that they were the source which leaked your infrmation to the spamers. A P.O. box would work pretty well, but I'm not shure how much the court would like things like fake names. It would be nice to have the post office log all the mail recieved by the P.O. box.
Can anyone think of any other objections? I'm pretty shure a jury would be very favorable to such an anti-spam suit (i'd vote to make them pay), but it may be hard to get a jury for small claims court. I suppose you could get a judge who gets lots of spam too..
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
I have made it my personal crusade to vanquish the evil monster known as DISCOVER CARD. I am college student and Ihave recieve no less than 12 different discover card applications in the mail this year. Plus all of the people on campus and the evil telemarketing minions.
My solutions to the problem:
1) Big Black Marker. Use it to write "DON'T SEND ME MORE JUNK YOU STUPID BASTARDS" on the application and then send it back in their envelope. Being creative is always approved. We've sent them dirty pictures, other companies applications. I sent them a bill one time. It's a jolly good time.
2) Waste time on the phone. Telemarketers can stay in business because they can call so many people each hour. If everyone take 10-15 they can only make 4-6 calls each hour. If everyone did this, then they would never get to the idiots who actually think a 25% + Prime Rate credit card is a good deal. 15 minutes is really easy to waste with a telemarketer. I usually pass the phone around the dorm. Most of my floors gets to talk to the guy. Or you can read a book to them. But most importantly, talk to the supervisor! Not only do you waste one telemarkets time, you waste a bosses time. And the boss gets paid more.
provolt
Not to support the trend toward more and more litigation but if the law provides for restitution bthrough litigation it is not a matter of enforcement. The law would work fine if there was a flat award in a reaonable amount, say about USD 15,000 ... ~500 is not enough to make the telemarketers care if they get sued once or twice, nor is it an mount most people would view as enough to be worth the trouble of liigation. It is a matter actually of a law being put on the books so that the legislators can say "we did someting" , without doing anything to anger the business...
morturii
There is a great book by Lawrence Lessig, called Code and Cyberspace. Lessig is the "cyberspace" lawyer from Harvard who is advising Jackson in the Microsoft case. The central theme of the book is that there are two types of legal systems in Cyberspace - East Coast Law made by politicians and West Coast Law made by software engineers. East Coast Law is largely ineffective in Cyberspace because the Internet is global. For example, it is unlikely an American company would be able to claim damages against Spam relayed from an open-relay vanilla Sendmail machine in Taiwan (or Chad, or Russia or wherever). West Coast Law consists of architecting anti-spam into the orignal architecture of the Internet (unlikely), or finding a systems solution which addresses the problem head-on (ie. Brightmail's Anti-Spam http://www.brightmail.com ).
Lessig says "code" is law (in Cyberspace).
A
An Arakansas law recently went into effect that allows AR residents who don't want telemarketing calls to register with the State.
Once registered, it is ILLEGAL for ANY telemarketer to call. You no longer have to tell each telemarketer never to call again and wonder, "Haven't I told these guys off before?"
I haven't even signed up, and already the number of SPAM phone calls is down.
I've gotten my share of telemarking pitches, and I've found a nice easy way to tell (before the first word is spoken) if they are a telemarketer.
Many of the services which call you use these mass-calling setups, where it will call about 5 numbers at once, have them all ring, then only talk to the first one who picks up..Notice a large number of 'hang-up' calls lately? It's probably a mass-calling, and you just happened to pick up the phone a bit too late.
Well, so the telemarketer is sitting at his chair, and presses this dial button on his -screen-. When the caller actually picks up the phone, it takes about 1-2 seconds for the telemarketer to hear you...Ever notice an absolute volume pause at the beginning of a telemarketer's call? That's the delay he's getting from the automated system.
So, when I pick up the phone, and hear absolute silence for 1-2 seconds, then a "HELLLO"..I just hang up. It's ALWAYS someone I don't want to talk to.
hope that can help some of you weed those spammers out;)
Actually, you can't use the business-reply card as a label, according to rule 917.243(b) in the Domestic Mail Manual, as detailed in this Straight Dope column.
Of course, you can send back a business-reply envelope with nothing (or a blank form) inside -- the USPS isn't going to bother checking those.
This has been posted on 2600 mag man years ago. What they do is, find out a "block" of pager numbers. Use a program to dial hundreds and thousands of pagers with the victims number. The victim will get loads of incoming phonecalls.
Last time I told a email spammer about this, he replied with four letter words and threats.
Well. So I went to a few commercial sites and refered his email address.
I keep a list of (valid) spammer email addresses to spam back.
This actually works. I saw in a report that one guy wrote this claim on his check when buying stuffs in Circuit City, got spammed, sued, and got paid the settlement 1000 dollars- just as he specified on his check.
Pardon me? The library was the victim in the internet filter fiasco here, not one of the bad guys. The library had no intention of allowing anal right wing religious freaks from out of town to dictate filtering to them, even if it meant a crippling loss of funding. The librarian is a hero in these eyes.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
I respectfully submit that what you saw was not a telemarketer, but Lionel Hutz!
Well, the moderators seem to have missed this, but take heart, at least *I'm* ROFL!
Offtopic -1
A guy in the post office is stuffing cards into pink envelopes, sticking little heart stamps on them, and spraying each envelope with perfume. When a curious onlooker asks what he is up to, he replies "I'm mailing 1,000 unsigned valentines!"
"But why...?" asks the onlooker.
"I'm a divorce lawyer!" the man answers with a grin.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
No. There is no need for me to be polite. There is no need for ME to make ANY REQUEST of ANY sort.
That instrument is in my home to serve MY communication needs. I pay for it. They are abusing it.
Go to the store and buy yourself a boat horn. Compressed air in a can. Apply liberally to handset as needed.
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Mailing lists, then, could be considered a broadcast medium, depending on the list.
So, given this distinction, I think it's fairly clear that unsolicited marketing is not acceptable in a point-to-point system. Yes, you can use the "opt-out" method that people described already, and that's already in place. But the problem here is that you simply can't account for all the people that will call you. And they will. They always do. Even the guy who said he contacted the DMA group said he still gets at least 1 call every year.
Freedom of speech is important. But it doesn't give you the right to convey this speech any way you want. You can't convey your speech through a blowhorn in someone's ear. You can't follow some guy around all day until he gives in to your views. So the issue of "freedom of speech" isn't as much of an issue as the "method of speech".
Hi!
I completely agree with this. Myself, I am getting about ten anonymous calls every day and as a result I do not answer my phone any more. Now the question is: what if I get an important call? I think this has everything to do with DoS. The telemarketers are denying my service!
Hmmmm...let's see...payphone...McDonald's near a courthouse...AHA!
I respectfully submit that what you saw was not a telemarketer, but Lionel Hutz! You may remember him from such historic trials as the OJ Simpson jaywalking hearing and...
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Try it sometime. "Hello, we are calling on behalf of" "No, no, no"
Then again, it's easier to just hang up.
-bugg
I note you have an .edu address .edu address, neither do my other faculty relatives. And what we get is traceable, as you noted. :)
I hardly get any spam on my
I guess they think we're poor students and not worth the effort.
That is probably the best explanation for it I've ever heard; ironic, isn't it? College tech types tend to have the most money of the various majors, and be the most willing to spend it online. The credit card companies seemed to think I was the best customer they could possibly attract there for while
I do own my own domain though, and it never seems to get shotgunned. I've had it for about a year and a half. Maybe I'm just tempting fate by constantly wondering out loud at my good fortune...
Communication is only possible between equals
My solution to spam is to just keep a junk address around. This way any time that I have to fill out a registration form or some such, I use my hotmail account. I get very little spam at any of my usual accounts, and MS doesn't seem to care about holding my junk for me.
-binner
Say what you mean, mean what you say! But please know what #$@% you are talking about!
This would be a much more acceptable method as opposed to the "feature" of the phone company allowing you to opt-out for a $6/month additional fee.
Right now, anyone who calls me gets an automated message (before I hear a ring) that asks if they are a telemarketer and to take me off their list or press '1' to talk to me. No telemarketers since.
-Vel
So, say we put a 25 cent 'tax' on every email someone sends.
Um, how about, fuck you? I pay for an internet connection. That means my computer can connect to others to request services/data. Mail or web pages, its all the same really under the hood. Besides, i'm already paying b/c that asshole spammed me, why should i have to be MORE when i'm trying to use it ligitimently?
While technically possible in the short term, logistically unfeasable in the long run. Imagine keeping the last seven years of email transactions for *@*.aol.com for tax purposes. Hell, I need to wipe the logfiles from my own forwarder once a month because they eat the 500 M partition!
no way that I'm going to let someone else check my logfiles just so they can tax meI wasn't proposing the means, just the end consumer effects; That email would be taxed to reduce spam, and the tax would kill Josephine Q. Maildiva.
.sig: Now legally binding!
>With telemarketters and direct mailers, they pay
>for the priveledge of trying to sell you
>something. That has to be fair. Otherwise,
>people will start complaining about all the
>intrusive ads on their television sets.
Telemarketing's closer to spam than to TV ads. TV ads pay for the programming. Telemarketing costs you time and uses up your resources (the phone line you pay for) without giving you anything in return.
Unfortunately most spammers aren't trackable companies. They're chicken-boners operating out of Mom's trailer.
;)
Otherwise legitimate companies who spam get LARTed quickly and efficiently, and learn that spam is bad. To do the same with telemarketing, you'd need an RBL for telemarketers. Any company that called unsolicited would get in said RBL and be unable to place non-telemarketing phone calls until they stopped the offending activity.
Drool. Wish I owned some phone companies
Wrong.
If you don't want someone who YOU KNOW THEIR NUMBER AND WHO THEY ARE to know your number, you shouldn't be calling them, plain and simple.
I have one friend who blocks his number, but he's the only person I know who comes up on caller id as Private, so I do pick up.
*shrug*
They're sending it to a lot of people bcc'd (blind carbon copied). You have to put SOMEONE in the to: field though, so they put their fake address in or osmeone they're sending it to. The blind carbon copied means that the people who receive it don't see who else got the email.
Heh, I think it wastes their time more than anything. Any day I come home and I have 2-3 calls on my answering machine (which doesn't like to stay completely plugged in, so the digital thing resets the recording... even still it says in the robot voice "please. leave. a. message. *beep*"
The messages on the answering machine say "Hello, is Dianna Gregory there. Hello? Hello?"
I laugh. I will never be home when they call during the day and if they call at night, they'll just hear a bitch answer the phone.
How can they tell that the phone number they're dialing is a cell phone? If you call someone it'll say "Sprint PCS" or wahtever, but how do THEY know before calling you?
I've gotten a telemarketer calling me on my cell before, and I bitch at them for less than a minute (first incoming minute is free) and hang up.
Hate to break it to you, but those laws have been in place since the mid 1990s and they already are enforced. An excellent resource for information on them is at Junkbusters. They even have a script provided for you, the end user to follow to ensure they are following the law, and the steps to take if they are not.
Hope this helps clear the air.
-Jason
If I could only live my life with my threshold at 4...
But my beef is that when you tell them to "not call you again" or "take your name off their list" they don't actually take your name off of anything, the just mark you in the database with the date/time saying not to call for atleast a year. Now there is an entire market of selling this information to other telemarketers- since there is nothing illegal about someone else calling you, and hey you picked up the phone so you seem to be a pretty good candidate to answer again.
It's a tough bind.
Wheeeee
But my beef is that when you tell them to "not call you again" or "take your name off their list" they don't actually take your name off of anything, the just mark you in the database with the date/time saying not to call for atleast a year. Now there is an entire market of selling this information to other telemarketers- since there is nothing illegal about someone else calling you, and hey you picked up the phone so you seem to be a pretty good candidate to answer again.
It's a tough bind.
Wheeeee
Sorry that I don't have any hard evidence for this, but I believe I remember watching a TV news program about telemarketing, and they mentioned that you could contact some group to get telemarketers to not call you. However, I do not believe that this law was in effect in every state (I don't think it is a Federal law), and the TV report said that people had contacted the group, but they would still get calls from telemarketers.
:)
And if it was on TV, it must be true.
You can trust me. I'm with the government.
The point, Robin, is that the phone companies shouldn't be allowed to connect PBX's which don't pass proper ID information in the first place. These marketers should be removed from the PSTN until their equipment meets the same specs that all residential customers have to put up with, including the transmission of CLID information. Fair's fair.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
There are also laws regarding allowable times to call. Telemarketers are forbidden to call after 9 PM local time, lest they suffer the wrath of BUN BUN!
--
The other side is crowded. The dead have nowhere to go.
What the heck, I figured, there's no harm in that. I had to kill time anyway.
20 minutes later they were still blabbing at me and my friends were waiting for me in the living room. I finally just hung up on them because they just started blathering at me and wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise.
After I hung up on them they even called me right back. Ugh. I hate telemarketers.
Go ahead, but it won't do any good, until the telemarketing companies put your number on their company wide 'do not call' list, their automated calling systems will KEEP CALLING YOU.
you need to say "company wide" because the same telemarketing company may make calls for dozens of companies, if you don't specify 'company wide', they may just block calls for that one particular company...
go ahead... don't make a request, but don't expect the calls to stop. I get maybe one a week now, used to get several a day...
nope, in this case, there's federal laws on your side, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act 47 U.S.C Section 227, and $500 per instance penalties if they don't comply.
read the stuff at Junkbusters for more info!
The real solution is to make unsolicited commercial communications of any kind (e-mail, telephone, television) a federal crime punishable by the death penalty. Then the world would be a much happier place, and we would simultaneously reduce the world's population and raise the average IQ level.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
The idea is great. Unfortunely I've lost count of the telemarketers that have hung up when I start collecting that info. I'm all for capitalism but when I get 15+ calls a day I get pissed!
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
>Maybe I can find a sufficently eardrum shattering >noise to play over the phone.
Sence I only get 2 or 3 usefull calls a week and my friends/family has e-mail I've taken to putting a modem on my voice line set to auto-answer when I get pissed them calling on weekends.
It hasn't stopped the calls but it is satisfying
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
I never order from someone that calls/mails me and I stop ordering from poeple that sell my name.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
Is saying something you disagree with a nuisance? Is shouting it in your ear a nuisance?
Freedom is a two way street. I should free to speak my mind. You should be free to ignore me.
Freedom begins with the right to privacy. I do not want my private life to be dominated by crass commercialism.
I can't hardly think of a song I really like that doesn't remind me of some kind of detergent, cereal, beverage, etc. Beautiful mountain scenery reminds me of Coors, or the Marlborogh Man.
Red Hat's marketing department just dropped their account. Good. Good Riddance. The Red Hat logo is cool enough. I don't need to have it shoved in my face every time I turn my head. If Red Hat makes amends with their marketing gurus, I'll stop buying anything from Red Hat.
Not every "nuisance" requires legislation, I agree. But when organizations overstep their boundaries and impose on my personal space, legislate them into oblivion, I say.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Your arguments are oversimple.
No one here is arguing that telemarketing or other forms of communication should be BANNED. But regulated, yes.
Justice is a balancing act. Freedom of speech is not the ultimate distillation of good society. Its importance cannot be overstated, but it does not overarch all other rights and obligations.
The problem is one of scale. As it exists now, anyone with an iota of enterprise can blast their way into your conscious life, like it or not. Multiply by a billion and this becomes more than "inconvenient". It should be unlawful for the same reason that it is unlawful for me to stand outside your house with a bullhorn and shout all night. It disturbs the peace.
Unsolicited bulk email should be taxed. Illegal SPAM should be canned.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Laws are necessary. A necessary evil, perhaps, bu necessary none the less.
At least that is my opinion, and I will vote for those people who represent the belief that advertising pollution is a nuisance.
Did you happened to watch the New Year's Eve festivities from around the world broadcast by PBS? There were spectacular celebrations in major cities all around the world. Very beautiful. My favorite was the fireworks display in Paris. Wow!
And then there was Times Square. A guady patchwork of billboards and neon punctuated by the golden arches.
Gross. The public environment belongs to all of us. Crass corporate pollution of our sensoroy environment CAN be stopped. And SHOULD be stopped. And only our elected government has the authority to do so.
So yes, there SHOULD be laws. There MUST be laws, or we are destined to have our attention distracted every waking moment by greedy corporate commercial interests. Because they want to, and they can.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I worked on a product that could alternatively play different messages to different types of caller id. Thus unknown callers would quitely be directed to voicemail while people you had selectively blocked could be hung up on and played a message that you didn't want to talk to them. Nothing is more satisfying than hearing the carpet cleaner receive the message "Sorry, we don't want to talk to you".
The phone had a DSP in it which was capable of processing distinctive ringing allowing people to redirect fax calls to their fax software.
It was quite a full featured USB and RS232 product with the two line version of the phone selling for 199$
In the end, my company discontinued the product. We're a telecommunications company and they were afraid of the retail space. Its a shame really. With that phone you could totally control who you talked to.. you could even play specific messages to specific callers.
I can provide more information on the phone if anybody wants extra info... in fact, I'd even bet my company would sell the product to enterprising people with a few dollars.
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
My websites receive a tremendous number of port scans, vulnerability checks and other such nonsense, is there anything that can be done? And as stated quite simply in my topic, is port scanning legal?
In Tennessee, they have passed a law where you can put your number on a "do not call" list. They have a 877 number you can call and/or a web site you can goto to put your name on the list. Telemarketers pay $500 per year to get the list. If they call someone on the list (weither the pay to get the list or not) they get fined $2000.
I think that we need a national law like this.
Small side note: More than 10,000 people called the first day the 877 number was open.
When I receive snail mail which is clearly advertising, I write "acceptance refused" on the unopened envelope and throw it back in the letter box (without a new stamp, of course). The advertising firm gets its letter back for recycling (good for the environment :-), has to pay the postal service and I usually don't get bothered a second time.
Cthulhu fhtagn!
The problem with the telemarketers not using a caller ID could perhaps be gotten around the following way:
A friend of mine, who has ISDN, uses his computer as an answering machine. He doesn't accept calls without caller ID on principle. Every time he receives a call without ID, the computer answers the phone and tells the caller to activate his ID. He lives in Germany, though, and not only is ISDN quite common there, they also don't have the telemarketer problem (AFAIK unsolicided commercial calls are forbidden by law).
Cthulhu fhtagn!
Canada has a similar organisation that offers the same service: the Canadian Marketing Association...
As we have far to many derogative comments about the New Scientist here I thought that I would link to their article that not only deals with these calls but gets you deleted from the database! Personally, I think that they do a very good job (The new scientist, not the telemarketers)... but there is no pleasing everyone.
here's the link
all last weeks stuff I'm afraid
I am the first to say, I can't stand spam email. I'm the first to report them to their original source domain and try to get them shut down. But I must say, it ends at that. The more the government gets involved in what email can and can't be sent, the worse off we are. We are a group of individuals who typically opposes laws that threaten to take away rights. We need to decide if what we want is a regulated or non-regulated internet. We can't straddle the fence and have it both ways.
IIRC, the Supreme Court has already ruled that free speech rules are different for commercial free speech and personal free speech. Anyway, I like idea in another post in this thread that suggests passing a law to not allow anyone to sell you anything via an unsolicited call. They can "free speech" all they want, they just can't sell anything.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
What can a person do about repeatedly receiving calls from a fax machine? My phone number used to belong to a pawn shop and in between annoying calls from people wanting me to buy their gold/firearms I would get a fax machine which apparently did not want to give up the first time I hung up on it...would repeat call every 5 minutes for a half-hour each day for about a month.
I was thinking about setting up the computer to receive those faxes then posting them online to shame the asshole behind the sending machine to stop trying to fax me. Then I got lazy and started using the other line for phone calls, plugged the fax line into the computer and left it.
Of course this phone line keeps getting calls for an "Adrian", which neither of me/my roomate knows, which the caller cannot/will not discuss with us. And they don't believe that Adrian is not there.
Any suggestions on either those situations?
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Your right to communicate ends at my property line. There's case law (not just laws, but court case findings) to back it up. (no, I'm not a lawyer, I'm the wrong species for one thing...but it does exist)
The problem is, telemarketing (unlike spam) hasn't exceeded the threshold to generate public outcry. Yet. It will, and then there will be laws.
Meow
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
That's a very novel idea, but the problem still arises that you have to pick up the phone, say "hello", and realize that they hung up. It's still a waste of time. =)
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Pablo Nevares, "the freshmaker".
Even better would be a server extension that would check for both large numbers of individual mails from a single IP (>10 per minute), or a larger recipient list (>15 or so) and log it. If the originator is known, simply add a service fee for their email (25 cents per recipient per message; 20 cents per KB; etc.). If not, block further email from that IP for some (variable) time.
I used to work for a survey company (hey, i was poor and needed the money for beer) and we were not allowed to call after 9:00 pm local time. I think that's a US law, not a state one, regarding any commercial calls. The idea is that after 9, you're probably asleep, and the company calling you can be cited for invasion of privacy or something like that.
On the flip side I'd be free to spam you as much as I wanted, muhahahah!
All opinions are my own - until criticized
I don't know if this has been posted yet...I really don't have the time to look through all of these. UnitedStatesCode,Title47,Chapter5, SubchapterII,PartI,Section227 I successfully used this to have my english professor quit sending me stupid liberal emails every day.
I have to disagree. The supreme court has already ruled that free speech does have limits, especially when the free speech violates the rights of other people. For example, lying about me in public to hurt my reputation can get you in hot water, at least financially.
There are certain areas in which one right might conflict with another, and this might be interpreted as one of them, as you don't have the right harrass other people. It depends on wether or not you consider it harrassment. I do. Someday the supreme court might, as well.
In a perfect world, I'd be able to say "don't call me again", but we don't live in a perfect world, and without laws to back you up, very few marketers would respect your wishes.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Someone was trying to get out of the mandatory long distance fees that most U.S. citizens pay. Even if you use one of those 10-10 numbers, you *must* select a long distance phone company. Even if you don't make a long distance phone call with that company, you pay the FCC fees and taxes.
Now, you can get Sprint PCS, for example, for 10 cents a minute, or say...300 minutes for $30.00 - that's more than I use, personally. So let's say you have no land phone line, only Sprint PCS, which has "free" long distance (no more money than the local calls, anyway).
FCC rules clearly state that telemarketers are NOT permitted to call a line where the recipient must pay for the call. They would automatically be in violation of the telephone consumers protection act.
Any thoughts?
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
If I read that correctly, then, for example, AT&T Long distance and AT&T Wireless can reasonably be considered an affiliated entity.
----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
There is also a privacy protection system available from some phone companies that, above the anonymous call rejection, will ask that people with "out of area" calls identify themselves, similar to a collect call, before ringing your phone. It is then your option to accept the call or not.
Alternatively, for you, if those features cost more, is this: No Sales Calls. Unfortunately, it's Windows 95 or higher only, and requires a modem that has caller ID functionality. I haven't used it, so don't think of this as an endorsement.
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
- FCC Home Page
- What you can do about unsolicited telephone marketing calls and faxes.
The latter does indeed state you will need to find out your state's laws about collecting $500.00 per violation, and suggest calling your local attorney general's office.----------
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Also, I cannot tell you how many messages I delete from "jim@yahoo.com" or "bob@hotmail.com" simply because I know all my friends named Jim and Bob and they don't use those services. If you don't recognize the address, delete it. Especially any messages without subjects, stupid subjects ("hey, I have a great stock tip!", or "about our conversation"), or from accounts with numbers ("j415@aol.com"), just delete them!!!
I know a lot of people don't like netscape's mail program, but the filters work, at least, and let you set up a wide variety with lots of options. I'd still rather not wait for messages to download, though...and that's why I'm against spam in general. One way or another they suck away your resources (time/money).
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Stupid sexy Flanders.
You know, I can't either! I get nearly zero calls per month now, and about the same amount of junkmail. Actually, I get so few calls at all, I wonder why I even still have Caller ID, or even a local phone!
I get so little junkmail now, it's nearly impossible to determine the source of it. Columbia House included.
Also, you should know that the telemarketing bozos work on an OPT OUT system. You need to tell every company with whom you do business, and every company with whom you ever share PII (Personally Identifying Information) that you do not want your PII sold or rented.
Also, my wife (yes, some geeks do get married!) is big into personal privacy and life simplification, and we wrote to the DMA and about 15 other places. Now we literally NEVER get calls. I mean, maybe one per MONTH, and I LOVE it. Except that I'm missing out on suing the telemarketers now, like my friend above! :(
Telemarketing & SPAM - Just Say No. I did, and it works!
They also show up as "Unknown" on caller id, so if I see that I generally don't answer it and let it go to voice mail. I once actually had a telemarketer leave me a message and asked me to call them back! I almost fell on the floor when I heard that one!
Mark
I think $500 would have been more therapeutic :)
see junkbusters
Exactly. Likewise, there should be a requirement for junk snail mail to be labeled 'promotional offer', 'advertisement' or some such thing. Furthermore, to kill off telemarketers, the government (or a consumer advocacy group) should simply create an online database of numbers for people who do not wish to receive unsolicited phone calls. If it was made federal, the congress could put laws into effect that imposed hefty fines on those telemarketing companies breaking that law. I think such a system would bring telemarketing/junk mail/spam to a grinding halt!
BTW - to stay on topic - spam == ddos. ddos just targets a server rather than a human!
Stop the brainwash
How long is this really going to be a problem? I assume that voice over IP will eventually replace the traditional phone system. Once that happens getting calls from telemarketers could be a thing of the past.
.com domain, you can silently discard it.
Currently you have no control over what happens when a call comes into your house. Any service like caller ID has to be performed by the phone companies.
But with VoIP, you could set up those services for yourself, to some degree. You can store the IP addresses of your friends, parents, etc. on your computer, and when a call comes in, software running on your computer, which you configured, can check to see if this might be someone that you would want to talk to.
Perhaps you can do an nslookup on the IP address of the sender, and if it is from any
If VoIP is going to replace the traditional phone system, then we might want to hold off on making any laws restricting what can be done with the phones. Once they're on the books, it'll probably be very difficult to get them off, and placing restrictions on the phone system now might keep some currently unseen advantages of VoIP from seeing the light of day.
That law doesn't apply to telmarketers calling companies -- only to telemarketers calling individuals. I work at a company that gets phone spammed relentlessly by recruiters, and I don't have any legal recourse.
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WWhhaatt ddooeess dduupplleexx mmeeaann??
This sig intentionally left justified.
Same here. Getting rid of my landline at home is the smartest thing I've done in the last 5 years. :)
I highly recommend PCS cell service over landline, for those who aren't relying on a hardwired phone connection for Internet service. Cellular technology and hardware has matured to the point at which landline connections no longer serve any purpose.... at least none that I can see.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Besides, how would it know whether or not you'd E-mailed that person before. If it was handled on the client's computer it would be EASILY cracked and therefore useless. If it were handled on the server then what happens if you change ISPs? Also, it could be kept on a massive database (Hello big brother paranoia). Also if that database went down, etc etc etc.
My telco has the same service, and ever since they introduced it, I get calls (Unknown Caller) yet there is nobody on the other end of the line!
My theory is that the telephone company is sending out these calls to everyone's homes so they will be irritated by it and buy the service to block these types of calls. I noticed that they are almost on a schedule too. How annoying, but what can you do?
actually, it's pretty easy. do not hang up, do not yell, do not curse... very nicely say "please put this number on your company wide 'do not call' list" ...lather, rinse, and repeat... 100,000 times for each of the other telemarketers. Did you know that an umbrella will keep you dry if you jump in a swimming pool?
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Yeah. I heard a case a ways back about a guy who sued an L.A. paper, either the Times or the Tribune because they wouldn't stop calling his house.
So there are laws in place, but you just have to know about them, and how to use them...that actually entails taking enough time to listen to the guy tell you who he is, which may not be as rewarding as telling him off, though.
What I REALLY wish would stop are these people that call my house with a machine, and after I pick up the phone (usually at 9 AM, on a FRICKIN' WEEKEND! The days I recover my lost sleep from trying to match East Coast time with that blasted stock market of theirs.) the machine helpfully tells me, that I "have an important message, so stay on hold while an operator can talk to me."
The is NO F***ING WAY I will stay on hold and listen to that. Nobody calls ME and then puts ME on hold. Next time I might actually wait it out...tell the person on the other end to hold on...mute the phone and toss it aside for the next 15 minutes, and then just hang up. Bastards. Maybe I can find a sufficently eardrum shattering noise to play over the phone.
I'm also really ticked off by the people from the L.A. Times that come to my door and try and sell me subscriptions...when I already get one. How hard is it to look that up? I mean, damn.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
The biggest crime in this department is unsolicited snail mail. Not only is it problematic to recycle, it's printed mostly on unrecycled paper. (which wouldn't be such a problem if we could still easily make paper out of hemp, like we used to). At our tiny post office, a huge bin fills up with this junk every week. Think how many trees would be saved if we could just put an end to that!
According to the post office, "they paid for us to deliver it, so we're just doing our job." Did you expect any sort of conscientiousness regarding the immorality of harassment, or the fact that this garbage crammed into my post box damages the mail I want to receive?
"Of course not! We're government workers!"
Yes, there are ways to turn it off. But the point is, default should be off.
If you want to abuse there Predictive Dialers, have a look at this site and the products they offer: Telemarketer Stopper!(TM)
The post office charges much lower postage for bulk mailers. This has always struck me as completely ass-backwards, they ought to charge them MORE to discourage the crap. That these folks get a rate cut means that the rest of us are subsidising the cost of their garbage.
Even so, junk mail is nowhere near as obnoxious as the phone telemarketers.
The guy calling my house to sell me stuff is sure as heck NOT paying the full cost of the call - he has not paid for my time nor for the meal that burns when I run to get the phone. Further, it's MY phone line use he is tying up with his obnoxious spiel. This one is a tad easier to deal with though - have your phone listed under an incorrect name - you can identify them in the first 2 seconds of the call and hang up.
Never, ever, ever buy anything from these folks, even if they offer to sell you something you were looking to buy anyways at half the price you could find on your own. It only encourages them.
I did this just today, stopped to buy a pre-paid phone card from a place that only sold MCI calls. MCI obnoxiously calls me again and again even though I have asked them not to. They will never, ever, ever, until hell freezes over, get a nickel of my money.
And play with them if you're in the mood... try to sign them up with Amway or convert them to the Lord or get them to enageg in phone sex as long as they're on the phone anyways. ;)
I don't think my email, phone or snail mail address ought to be used by marketers... unless I have asked for a catalog. All personalized, intrusive marketing ought to be opt-in only.
It DOESN'T work - MCI calls me repeatedly in spite of repeated requests that they never call me again.
The only way to stop them is to make it not profitable. That means that everyone who recieves junk phone or email should try to stay on the phone as long as possible. Be nice. Ask them about their product. Ask them for more information. Explain that you don't know english very well and ask them to explain it again but slower. Keep them on the line as long as you can afford. Even if you can spend 5 minutes of your time... and everyone else does the same, the number of calls/emails they can make or send will decrease drastically.
Waste Their Time!!
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
In fact, the only time I can think of the government doing something to stop this kind of unsolicited advertising for the consumer's benefit was the anti-fax-spam law, but at that time (and even today) most of the fax machines were owned by (you guessed it) corporations.
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http://gammatron.weblogger.com
I'm sure they'd love to, but it's illegal, at least in the US. I worked as a telemarketer for awhile (felt very guilty about it, but I needed the money to get through college) and they instructed us that if anyone asked to be removed from the list, we had to, otherwise the company could be held liable and had charges filed against them.
Dinner is the time when the highest percentage of people are actually at home and not out doing something, so it tends to be a prime calling period for telemarketers (usually 5:30-7 or so), as it's when they can get the best results.
Hey, if I were to, say, post a story about how great it is to be a geek, and someone decided to post it on Slashdot, then my site would be totally ruined by the zillions of hits I'd get. That's a DoS attack if I've ever heard of one.
myopic prowls
MyopicProwls
My homepage
Now, if you want to ban unsolicated email or phone calls you get into the problem of prior restraint. Basically, the government cannot ban speech before it is said (or printed or whatever), but may inact punishment for what is said later. Now, banning unsolicated speech may be prior restraint. I would feel that it may be: the government is banning a class of communication. So it may be difficult for the government to simply ban it. It may have to be opt-out only.
Matt Leese
We here in Arizona passed (and our Governor signed on April 7) the first state law specifically banning DoS attacks. House Bill 2428, in the relevant part (trimming some extra language - language in CAPS is new - formatting on the Ariz. website is much better), says:
13-2316. Computer tampering; venue; forfeiture; classification
A. A person WHO ACTS WITHOUT AUTHORITY OR WHO EXCEEDS AUTHORIZATION OF USE commits computer TAMPERING BY:
4. RECKLESSLY DISRUPTING OR CAUSING THE DISRUPTION OF COMPUTER, COMPUTER SYSTEM OR NETWORK SERVICES OR DENYING OR CAUSING THE DENIAL OF COMPUTER OR NETWORK SERVICES TO ANY AUTHORIZED USER OF A COMPUTER,COMPUTER SYSTEM OR NETWORK.
E.
I know Slashdotters think state laws in the international world of the Internet, but it helps Arizona prosecute the bad guys who live here. And with serious felonies on the table, extradition from other states becomes a viable option. This isn't just a trespassing misdemeanor anymore. (FYI: HB 2428 addressed a lot of technology crime issues, from trade secrets to cyberstalking. It's a good read.)
==
"This is the nineties. You don't just go around punching people. You have to say something cool first."
It'd be a nice thing to do with a linmodem.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Chris
Hehehe this $500 deal seems pretty neat to me. I usually bug the telemarketeers away with:
:)
"Oh sorry, I'm in a rush right now. If you give me your private phonenumber, I will call you back at, let's say between 11 and 12 pm, so you can explain everything."
Somehow they are never interested in me anymore after that
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B10m
-Elendale (And yes, I know about caller ID. Why should I pay for something to protect me from annoying people?)
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Georgia started a "No-Call List" back in 1998. For $5 a resident can be put on this list for two years, during which time a company cannot call to solicit business if they do not already have a relationship with you. I signed on at the very beginning and it has cut down the number of telemarketer calls tremendously. Non-profits and polls can still call you, but at least the spammers can't. I really like the fact that this is voluntary. For more info see: http://www.ganocall.com/
if telemarketing didn't *work so well*..... i.e. if people weren't such suckers...... we wouldn't need laws against it. it simply wouldn't be profitable. it's like gossip mags or sweatshop-made clothes or lots of other stuff. people *say* they hate it.....yet they still buy buy buy...... - O
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Computer programmers do it byte by byte.
I think the fuss over unsolicited email stems from pent-up frustration over real junk mail, annoying phone calls from the LA Times, etc. People have become so frustrated with these things that they've long given up the idea of fighting them; but with the internet, they now see an opportunity to "nip it in the bud" this time around. People feel that the struggle against spam is a battle that can still be won, so it gives them a feeling of hope and control that they've lost elsewhere in their lives.
The real issue is still real junk mail and unsolicited phone calls. I think of how many trees have to die every year for all that paper that never even makes it into my house, because I stop at the trash can on the way in from the mailbox. The outrageous invasion of privacy of companies like the LA Times makes me sick: even if you pay extra for an unlisted number, they somehow find it, and manage to be the first to call on your new, "secret" line. I think of all those arthritis-stricken senior citizens struggling in great pain to get to the phone, thinking it's an urgent call from a doctor or family member; only to find some fuckhead from the LA Times on the other end, who's already been told several times to stop calling.
Junk email, OTOH, imposes nothing on the recipient but a few mouse clicks. I'm not an ISP administrator, but I suspect the marginal cost of junk email isn't that big a deal. And when I think of the alternatives already mentioned, it's an even smaller price for society to pay.
I don't know what to do about unsolicited phone calls, except re-engineer this country's privacy laws and enforcement policies. Regarding junk mail, the paper kind, I'd love to see postage rates double, or triple. Think of all the trees that would be saved. What about the small service businesses that rely on coupons, fliers, etc? Let 'em burn. The ones who are any good are always booked solid from word of mouth. If the others need to advertise this way, there's usually a reason.
Bring on the junk email, I don't care! A dozen or two extra mouse clicks a day won't kill us! Let's concentrate on the real problems!
I followed http://localhost which Netscape turned into http://www.localhost.com/.
Eventually, after reading about localhost's anti-spam lawsuit, I got to a nice resource about what to do if you have received spam:
http://www.spamfree.org/victims/
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
Create a national database of people who don't mind being contacted for unsolicited sales. You cold even keep track of what kind they want.
You only put the phone number, and email address.
Pass a law that severly fine those who contact people not on the list.
Of course the Telemarketing business won't like this, but I bet less then 1% of Americans would be on it.Perhaps something similiar could be done in other countries as well.
I know there would be a few details, but this could work.
Now that I think about it I would put an adress listing in the database as well, and make all the companies that use "dead tree" spam adhere to this law.
On a personal note, I would rather get 100 pieces of spam in my inbox, then 1 unsoliceted dead tree ad.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A number of technical solutions have been offered here, including: a No Solicitors message to callers, possibly based on caller ID, Line Noise, and my favorite: error tri-tones (that beedle-ey-beeep you hear when you dial a number that is no longer in service) to fool predictive calling programs into putting you on a no call list.
Legal solutions.... Aaaargh! I don't want another law to 'protect' me.
And, excuse me, but politely telling the telemarketer to put me on a 'No Call' list misses the point: I've already answered a call I didn't want, and even if they all obeyed, I doubt that I could get on enough 'No Call' lists to make a serious dent in my phone spam.
My local dial-tone provider (US West) offers a service for $8 a month that will tell anyone that doesn't transmit caller ID info to hang up if they are telemarketing.
That, my friends, is the rub. Why can't telco's just transmit caller ID info for telemarketers? That's all I want! They can ring all they like, as long as I know not to answer. So Why doesn't that happen?
1. US West and their cohort would no longer be able to overcharge me for an ineffective blocking service
and
2. Requiring that a 'Telemarketer Tag' be transmitted would be so effective in putting phone pests out of business that $millions in long-distance revenue would be lost.
As long as Telcos and Pols are involved, no effective solution will arise, as such would be contrary to the self-interest of all those involved
(except Joe Consumer. Poor Schmuck.)
ceci n'est pas un 'sig'
But they do - im currently processing a lawsuit against the home shopping network 4 times in the last six months they have called me, seized my line (can't hang up on the call) and proceded to send out an avertising blurb - all done by automation - no human, no nothing - i have 2 of the 4 on my answering machine, and once i got a number from my caller id box.
CA has nice anti harrassment laws, so this should be lucrative. >:)
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
even better - go to spamcop.org and get an account (free), or join (not too expensive)
:P)
process your spam and it will email provide tracking info on the offending piece. 3 times ive even gotten spam from stupid spammer who didn't spoof - i now have names, home addresses, and phone numbers for 2 of them, not to mention the joy of having thier accounts (big full blown commerial sites) closed (no refunds
the names etc have been turned over to my pet shark. (oh the temptation to call someone to provide a permanent solution...)
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
There was one particular domain that has been sending alot of junk to my hotmail account lately. Always from different accounts so I couldn't just block one address.
I looked up who the domain was registered to then using the whitepages online I found out their home phone number. I then submitted an order on their site with this guys details with a note asking what time at night he would like me to call him at home to discuss his spam policy.
Since then I have not recieved any spam from that domain.
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
a) There were no businesses other than those owned by the government. They didn't even need to try to convince you to buy stuff from them. You had to.
b) If they ever managed to have a telemarketing problem, they could have delt with it a bit more harshly than the US. For example if you made another unsolicited to some guy who told you he wanted to be put on your do not call list, they could have just sent you the the Gulag for a decade, problem solved.
Whenever I hear "Hi this is Shmoe calling from Annoythehellouttame Company..." I pass the phone to the 2-year-old in the house and get back to whatever I was doing bofore. The entertainment value is good, although it does tie up the phone line. If the youngun is too pre-occupied to play with the phone I'll usually just plunk the phone in front of the TV.
one better than mcleodeight
I believe the telephone companies would fight tooth and nail against this, as they are economically interested. Besides the call charges independent telemarketing companies rack up, the telcos themselves supposedly own a sizeable chunk of the telemarketing companies out there. At least I've heard some things to this effect.
since when does a corperation enjoy the same rights as an individual?!?!? I mean come on. I can see that not limiting a persoal use of the phone but I mean come on!!!! If My corperation has your phone number and war dials it with a pre recorded message that is illegal. what is the differnce between this and common telemarketing practices? the only difference is that the prerecorded message is replaced with a $10/hr person who hates them self for what they do? just my 1/2 cent
A dude in Chicago (I believe) successfully defended himself against the barage of dinner-time phone calls by 1) getting the name of the telemarketing company that was calling him (not to be confused with the company whose products were being peddled,) 2) telling them not to call him again, and 3) getting an address to write. He then sent a registered letter to each company informing them that he did not wish to be called, and if they did he would charge them $500 for, get this, using his personal telephone equipment for their marketing purposes without his consent. Well, one company did call back, he sent them a bill, they didn't pay, he sued and won! Too cool!
Even if you don't want to do the letter writing thing, this approach is still insanely efficient because it nicks the problem at the source - the telemarketing company. So, you have to ask yourself one question: is the threshold of pain low enough to go to all the trouble?
{Deth Onastick}
What really irritates me are those emails with in the bottom a text like 'under US law you can't sue us if we include this information'. (I can hear them saying 'nah nah nah' and pulling a long nose at me!) And more often than not, the remove-address doesn't exist. Or, and this is the worst INHO, they include a 0800 phone number. As if I could - or would - call this from Europe, where I live...
Inez{R}.
>The post office charges much lower postage for bulk mailers. This has always struck me as
>completely ass-backwards, they ought to charge them MORE to discourage the crap. That these
>folks get a rate cut means that the rest of us are subsidising the cost of their garbage.
The reason the post office charges less for bulk mail is because it costs less. It's presorted by zip code and it's delivered at a lower priority than first class.
How do I know all this? I knew some friends at a non-profit that used it to send newsletters out to its members. Not all bulk (snail)mail is junk.
He claimed that he was not allowed to call anyone after midnight. He tried to use that as a reason I should answer his survey. He said I'm the last chance he could make money for the day. However, when he called back it was after midnight.
What an asshole.
I probably would have tried to do something about it if I weren't too asleep to think.
and when i press my face against the frosted shower stall
Just last week a telemarketer called me at one minute til midnight (11:59 PM) and woke me up wanting to ask me about my oppinions on clothes brands. After denying him twice and saying goodbye he then started reading the first question.
I promptly hung up.
Here's the good part
Then he called me back. What kind of dense telemarketing arse calls someone back after being hung up on? I seriously wish I could have hurt him in some way.
It turns out he called my next door neighbor right before he called me. I can't believe they have the nerve to call people at midnight.
and when i press my face against the frosted shower stall
This assumes that the DMA is a reputable organization. Basicaly, I put them in the same category as politicians, lawyers, child molesters, script kiddies, etc.
For more info on just how sleazy the DMA is, check out variouls anti-spam organizations web sites.
That's my understanding too. Just make SURE you record the date and time they call and also the telemarketer's name and supervisor's name. I've read about people making several thousand dollars just by requesting to be removed from their lists and keeping good records. Many companies called back after being asked not to and forked over $500 rather than have a lawsuit slapped on them.
/*--Why can't I find the QNX OS on any warez sites?
* (above comment useless as of 4-26-2000)
*/
"....or reply to unwanted emails"
I personally wouldn't recomend this. Replying to spam most often does nothing more than verify that your e-mail address is active and you end up getting even more spam. Not responding to spam can give the impression of an inactive address which may be dropped from the list. If you're going to e-mail them, use an anonymous e-mailer or forge the e-mail.
/*--Why can't I find the QNX OS on any warez sites?
* (above comment useless as of 4-26-2000)
*/
I've seen devices that automatically block your caller id by sending *67 when the phone is picked up. Anybody know of any caller-id on a chip solution and want to build such a device?
SubSolar.
In France only the public TV gets money from TV licensing, not the private ones.
The problem is that they still have lots of ads, but we get to have ad-free movies on these channels.
I believe in the UK system this is the same, that is the TV licenses pay for BBC1 and BBC2 (which should be almost ad-free) but not for the otherhannels, who thus have ads (hey, they must live), so the channel for which you pay (via TV licensing) are ad-free, but the ones that you don't pay for (the others) are with ads.
The situation with cable is that you pay for the cable connection, not for the channels, so they must make money with ads.
At home I have a satellite connection and we just paid the satellite antenna but the channel are with lots of ads. Other, encrypted, channels may have less ads but I would have to pay for them.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
We son't need MORE laws.. there are way too many as it is.
What we DO need is a way for the average person to avoid such annoyances. This is something the phone company should take care of.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
Yeah, Americtech in Chicago offers "Privacy Manager". The way I understand this is it works with caller ID, intercepts all calls with no CallerID (read: telemarketers), prompts them to enter a phone number before they will even ring your phone. Since most telemarketing predictive dialers have no way of responding with a touch-tone phone number, the call never goes through. It's more like $40, not $5 though.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
No, local phone companies don't love telemarketers for the revenue they generate directly. Does the phone company get any money from you for incoming calls? No. Do telemarketers tie up capacity? Yes.
Your local phone company gets only an interconenction charge for calls that come in from outside its area. Phone companies in Utah and Nebraska love telemarketing companies. They have little revenue from residential customers so they love to hook up call centers with 30,000 or so seats.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
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guillaume
give me all your garmonbozia
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guillaume
give me all your garmonbozia
But telemarketers can't put a computer that will automatically call all phone numbers and play a recorder message, that would be illegal. At least you are in communication with a human, and have the right to tell them to stop calling you.
It's the spam laws that need to be improved. Personally telemarketers don't bother me, I'm not shy of just saying "no.".
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guillaume
give me all your garmonbozia
If we just banned it all together then it'd be pretty easy to enforce, it's not like we can't tell who it is selling us the stuff.....
- "yes but can you hit someone over the head with a rolled up internet?" -Foxtrot
don't ask how i know all this... let's just say that was the worst month of my life, please don't hold it against me .. I NEEDED THE $$$. and i have changed my ways.
- "yes but can you hit someone over the head with a rolled up internet?" -Foxtrot
But seriously, I've actually tried it, and invariably the telemarketer offers some deflecting answer beginning with 'No' ("No, I just want to let you know about an opprtunity...") You can spend a long time trying to get them to admit they're selling something (they are given deflecting scripts to use against this checklist!) and I doubt you'd have any luck suing on the basis that they denied trying to sell you something.
Agreed. The tactic I've settled on is this;
Them: Hi! Is Mr. Spoing there?
Me: Are you a friend or associate of Mr. Spoing?
Them: Are you Mr. Spoing?
Me: Please remove us from you list. *CLICK*
If the person on the other end evades a direct question, they don't deserve the benifit of the doubt. They've already lost credability.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Tie that in with caller ID; if the number is a friend, put them through. If not, give them the "No solicitors" message.
Also, if the caller ID comes up with nothing or garbage, give them a stronger version of the "No solicitors" message. Many telemarketers block caller ID so that you can't trace them. Use that tid bit to your advantage!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I'm not talking about a Turing prize winner, but something that speaks in a mumble or with an accent that sounds almost like a real person.
That alone should keep them on the phone for a while...and stop them from annoying the next person.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
There are devices out there that you can hook up to your phone line that will play pre-recorded messages such as this. IIRC, Radio Shack sells them for around $15.
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
The government gets an Internet tax.
Problem: What happens when the sender does not reside within the borders of the USA? This is what makes internet taxes unfeasible...remember, the internet is an international entity, and no one government can exercise control over it all.
=================================
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
Further, what's the difference from junk snail mail and spam email? It is more environmentally conscious to send spam, other than that, there is little.
If there is a way to regulate commercial advertisements so that they are no longer an annoyance, it would require carefully defining commercial so that solicited literature can get through, but the loophole for this is not large enough for others to use.
To fix your phone, get caller id and private number blocking. To fix your email, set up filters. To fix banners, fix /etc/hosts or configure a caching DNS. To fix TV ads, don't watch TV.
Just remember, the media we use comes at a price. Reduced rates are what you pay, the rest is a social burden-- ie ads, etiquette, etc.
Some of us are born with the ability to, 9 times out of 10, distinguish a telemarketer from someone you actually want to talk to. With a last name like "Van Vertloo", it was always pretty easy to figure it out. The telemarketers would always butcher the name, or, if by some chance they got it correct, it would only be after a short out-of-place pause, which would also give them away. Then it's simply a matter of "he/she isn't home right now." And since telemarketers (at least the ones I've talked to) always ask for someone by using first and last name, it's a pretty good strategy. Although if I'm going to make millions and retire by the time I'm 30, people may start figuring out how to pronounce my name... :)
I've actually worked in telemarketing The only way you ever take someone's name off (for any type of financial telemarketing) is if they are a pensioner i.e. we couldn't sell them anything. In addition, if we determined from a few houses that this was a low income area we would write that down. So if you don't want to be rung, tell them you're 80 with no money. However, since the CD's with everyones phone numbers on them are sold from company to company, only one company will ever cross you off their list.
Its easy to stop them from calling you. 'Whats your address...please place me on your DO NOT CALL LIST' A federal law requires they keep a 'do not call' list for ten years. If they call you back, $10,000 dollar fine. And they take this VERY seriously. When I found out about that, I was getting 10 telemarketers a week calling me, after a week of that, it was close to two years before I heard from them again.
I believe I sow it posted earlier that you can ask to be put off of a telemarketers list and this is true but you must send them a letter. (IANAL tho but this is what a lawyer friend of mine said.) However there is a much easier and more fun way to combat this then a noterized letter. When a telemarketer call you keep them on the phone for as long as possible. Phone time takes money. On the scale of a telemarketing company an average rise of 30 seconds per call will just kill that companies profits. So talk to the telemarketer. Pretend that you are interested. Make fun of them whatever but KEEP THEM ON THE LINE!!!. I've taken to saying "Hey just one second while I get the head of the household on the line" Then I put the phone down for about a minute and change my voice. Tell them that I don't handle that and they need to talk with someone else. Put them on hold agian and so on. After about a year of doing this and other tactics (inculding asking to be off of thier mailing list) I can now say that I get about 1 unsolicited call a month. now I just hang up on them because I don't feel like ruining the poor persons day and i have won the war.
Just rambling on and on and on.......
Pithy, yet ultimately meaningless, phrase expressed with gusto!
I cannot tell you how many messages I delete from "jim@yahoo.com" or "bob@hotmail.com" simply because I know all my friends named Jim and Bob and they don't use those services
What I would like to see is an app that deletes all mail except mail from(names from a list I created)..
I don't answer the phone if I don't know or suspect who is calling, I don't want to see email unless I know who it is from.. Yah, ok, I can hit delete, but I'm real lazy..
Well, I don't have anonymous call blocking, one of the phones that I has rings differently when the calling number is blocked. I think it's a Vista 350 made by Nortel? Also I have heard rumblings that there will be an option to block anon calls, or at least send them to a message that I've chosen. ;-)
Mind you, none of that helps much, the telemarketers that call me always show the name/number they are calling from (it's amazing how many of these people work from home!). Maybe that is a law in Canada? I would like to selectively block this or that number from calling, but this is kind of like a killfile, pretty easy to get around.
For the anon callers though, well, my parents are anon, so I still have to answer the phone
We had a telemarketing company that didn't block their number from my Caller ID unit. So what I would do is write down the number wait a few hours go down to a pay phone call them up and say "This is XXX from people against telemarketers we have had reports your company/phone number has been placing a lot of annoying sales calls so we are now disabling the line" and walk away. Evidntally their predictive dialer was messed up because no matter what the person on their end did it (the dialer) would not hang up untill someone hung up the pay phone. (and i made sure they wern't in busy areas)
The thing is, no one's gonna stop telemarketers because they pay the phone company to use the system. This is the key difference between telemarketing and spamming. Spammers don't pay to use the bandwidth they suck up on the 'net. Telemarketers do.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
My phone company allows me to turn off "Anonymous" calls based on my CallerID service. However, most telemarketers' calls show up as "Unavailable" and are unaffected by the filter.
What I need is a smart phone: one that rings based on a programmable pattern.
A high, loud ring if the call is from my Mom.
A normal ring if it is from a known friend.
A soft ring if it is from an identifiable party.
No ring -- it goes straight to the answering machine if it is from "Anonymous", "Unavailable", or something else.
Are there any hacks out there that can use my modem and CallerID service to filter my calls based on these criteria? If there are, I would jump on it! My phone rings so often from telemarketers that my phone is quickly becoming an annoyance rather than a tool.
What is most interesting to me here is the 1st amendment issues unsolicited marketing brings up. You can argue that much of the information we are presented with is unsolicited and unwanted, from advertising to political retoric. In america however we protect speach, even repugnant speach, because we beliver (at least some of us do) that it is better to err on the side of caution and allow any who would speak out to say their piece. Even if it means that you have to stand up and deny what that person is saying at the top of your lungs. The only speach we restrict is that which is untrue and meant to be damaging. For example shouting fire in a crowded theater, or libelous speach. While advertising, even telemarketing, may be lies it is not often meant to be harmful, it is certainally an annoyance, but not a danger (envronmental issuses aside). We choose not to restrict advertising (well except tobacco, so this argument may be slightly full of it) because even though it is not a good thing, it is better to only restrict speach in dire cercumstances. DDOS attacks on the other hand are meant to harm, even if they are used in protest they go beyond the barrier of speach and cross into action. thoughts?
Tom Mabe, a self-employed family man, found out that telemarketers call often, especially when you're home all day. He's an extremely funny man without resorting to vulgarities, sex jokes or direct insulting of people.
http://www.tommabe.com/ is his website. He has a CD out of some of his exploits of telemarketers who call him, available for sale from his site.
What's more, there are a few samples of his works. This, I feel, is the best way to combat telemarketers. Asking them to remove you from their lists often ends you up with having to write a letter or taking weeks to do. Instead, make yourself such an asshole that NO ONE wants to call you.
Also, if you don't buy anything or subscribe to anything from a telemarketer, or ask for any products or freebies, you tend not to get added to what's known as the "sucker" list. This list is sold exclusively as a list of people who have purchased things through telemarketing calls. This is why the moment you sign up for anything or buy anything from someone calling you, you immediately get more calls.
Enjoy!
Dragon Magic
Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different. -- Earl of Chesterfield
Regarding a service from the Phone company to try to discourage solicitations. I called a gentleman last week out of the classifieds. The first thing that happened was that the line was picked up and a said something like "This is a recording requested by the telephone subscriber you are trying to reach. If you are a telemarketer or solicitor, please place this number on your do not call list and hang up now. Any other callers please press 1 to connect." I thought it was the coolest thing. Unfortunately I did not figure out from the gentleman how/who had put the feature on his line. I can tell you that he had a number in the 507 area code and the US West was most likely his phone company! Good luck.
For SPAM, that dastardly UCITA may come to our aid:
Boy would I love to see UCITA bite a spammer in the ass.
Does the Plain Old Telephone System have the installed equipment to combat telemarketers? I know that you can trace a call, but how fast can that be done? On the Internet, you have IP's that may or may not be spoofed, but unless you pay a premium for callerID, you don't have that luxury with telephone. If we could trace calls that were only 10 seconds long, then we would have the tools to back up any such laws. Without that, I'm afraid such laws would be unenforcable.
Yes, this is true. It is illegal for direct marketers, or anyone, for that matter, to call your cell phone unsolicited. Which brings me to another point: How often do you use your phone? Most of my communications take place over email, in person, or briefly on my cell phone. Once I get DSL, I'll have no use for a phone. They can call me as much as they want, and my ringer will be off. This is one excellent way to avoid BS calls. In addition to this, they will still call you *many* times before realising that you never answer your phone. I know this because at the moment, my folks have two phone lines. One is data only, but does have a phone connected to it. Occasionally, I have a reason to turn the ringer on, and I have received on average about 5 calls/night on this line, which is almost never answered.
Even if the spammers started sending signed mail, it takes a few CPU cycles to generate the signature (assuming the signature includes signing the mail headers -- if it just signs the body, all bets are off). This will have the effect of limiting the number of spams they can send per hour.
Maybe we could come up with some other hash that would be generated from the mail body and headers, that would take time (say, 5 - 10 seconds or so) to generate, which would be required to be appended to the end of the email, otherwise the message would bounce. In this case, it should be developed as a plugin that would work with most of the email clients out there.
How many times do you hear this when you go to the checkout counter at some stores? What happened to "Did you find everything you were looking for? How will you be paying?"
Instead, they should say "Hi, because we allowed you into our store, we would like to violate your privacy, please."
The reasoning for the need for this is either to pass this on to telemarketers or to mail you more junkmail.
For some reason or another, my wife and I like our privacy and don't feel like giving out this information to the guy at Radio Shack, so either:
a) question the need for this and if a good answer is not provided, we sometimes threaten to take our business elsewhere OR
b) we give them the phone number for their own store or make one up.
The US is acting against DDoS attacks because the attackers are "acting against commerce," where the telemarketers are just bothering people. Big difference
Mike Sandman sells at http://www.sandman.com/tmstop.html a cute device that sends a signal that the phone has been disconnected.
Supposedly the predictive dialing computer then hangs up the annoying telemarketing call and removes your number from the database. If a human is calling, all you do is explain the strange tones and go back to your regularly scheduled conversation.
Has anyone tried this gadget and if so does it work?
The main guise that anti-uce laws are being drafted under is for cost-shifting. Many people are paying by the minute for internet usage, so receiving UCE cuts into their pocket directly. Whereas most (if not all) phone calls to a land line in the US are free for the receiving party (note cell, etc. are not included in "land line" part). So to receive their messages the advertiser is not directly pushing their cost the customer (my time is worth X dollars, etc. isn't much of a REASONABLE complaint before congress, nor is I pay X dollars for service when you'd pay the same fee if you got the call or not).
I believe that there is a law somewhere about cell phone numbers being "unlawful to spam", I may be incorrect, but I seem to remember reading that somewhere. Both cellphones & faxes can be applied with the cost shifting rules, faxes (used to) cost lots of dollars and incoming minutes still cost quite a bit so the advertisers can't shift costs to the consumer to hear their speil.
I would love to stop spammers, telemarketers, etc as much as the next guy, but where does it stop? An accident occurs, there are gawkers on the rode can I sue the gawkers & the people involved in the accident because they inconvenieced (sp?) me on may way back from work? How about going to a sporting event and having the opposing team harrasing me with chants about how great their team is? This stuff neads to be fought in the cost-shifting arena, if an advertiser wants to eat ALL THE COST to send me an advertisement great, I can ignore it and not worry about it.
Spelling & Grammar checker off because I don't care
I gone through the process before, all the way to small claims court.
the problem arises when your name is on a list that is distributed to all the telemarketing company's, or the phone book for that matter, nothing is stopping them from picking your name out of the phone book
Atticka
No sig here...
The part of spamming that gets to me is the fact that there is no way to seperate it from other messages. Spammers will send a message seemingly from 'mike@yahoo.com' with something like 'hello' in the subject field. There is no way to tell that the message is an advertisment. That would be the same as getting a letter in the mail in a plain envelope from 'john smith' and finding an advertisment inside (and the return address non-existant).
I think as a solution that advertisers should have to put either ADV or Advertisment into the subject line. I also think that they sould only be able to send mail with real reply addresses. Thay way you would have somewhere to reply to them, requesting that you want to be taken off their spamming list.
I am the Deputy Director of Slashdot! -James Earl Jones.
First, I get upset at the stupid people who actually buy stuff from spammers. If no one EVER bought stuff then the spammers wouldn't make any money and they would stop. Because a few stupid people make spamming profitable we all must be spammed. Second, I find junk mail and phone calls much more annoying than spam email. Junk mail I have to throw out (which is bad for the enviroment) and phone calls always come during dinner. Yet people complain about junk email more than junk snail mail. I can just hit the delete key for spam email -- wish I could do that for other things.
Well here is Australia we have a similar problem, although thankfully I don't think they all use automatic machines like they do in the US. Fortunately my parents have kept their different surnames, so generally if they ask for "Mr and Mrs X", you know straight away who its going to be (either that or authority :-), so either way it's a good time to say "No" and hangup). Good tricks I've found can be:
... [whatever they rang you about].
1) "they were both killed in a car accident last week.... (pretend to be upset): who is this? you bastards" and then hang up. Not only do they feel really guilty (hey, it might even put them out of work due to emotional grounds), but guaranteed they won't call back
2) Ask them whether they know your first name (they won't)
3) Breathe heavily (that can freak them)
4) Ask _them_ whether they would be interested in buying your products (revenge!)
5) Use a large whistle and blow HARD (generally the phone system will top out the volume, but it doesn't sound too good with a headset).
6) Best of all if you have CallerId and they are stupid enough not to turn it off (often they work from home), call them between the hours of 12am and 6am and ask whether they want to buy your exciting range of
7) Read them back their phone number if you have CallerID: say you work at a telephone company, tell them its really easy to find out where they live from their number and say that you're coming around tonight to sort them out/disconnect their phone for misuse/etc (evil but fun).
8) Read them back a b.s. fake law (they won't go to the trouble of looking it up) and tell them that if they don't disconnect in the next 5 seconds they will be fined $xxxx dollars (in an authoritarian voice).
9) Burp into the phone and then hang up (almost as good as spitting on them, but obviously you can't do that)
Re: Hangups from calling machines. An engineer who works on these machines told me to say "Hello", pause, say "Hello" again. Thats how they differentiate a live answer from your answering machine. It works! Now that you have a live telemarketer on the line say, "Hold on a second, I'll get them for you." Then set the phone down... The engineer that told me about this was very embarassed to admit he worked on these anoying devices.
Can't speak for all telcos, but Bell Atlantic offers an option that'll automatically block any calls from numbers caller ID can't read. I don't get a lot of telemarketing calls right now, but if they get out of hand, the way they have a few times in the past, I'll spring for this.
- Robin
Unfortunately, the USPS's change of address form feeds directly into a database which is, you guessed it, sold to marketing firms.
The turnaround time for propogating the information out is about three to six months, so for the first half of a year, you're ok, but afterwards, you've become identified as a high-quality (recent) address, and to boot, recently moved so a good candidate for household goods, services,....
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
...and what's to keep you from upping the ante on the computational difficulty. Say your problem is "brute force this hash". Increasing the keylength by one byte doubles the (mean) compute time. Make this user configurable, or if you're really smart, code the program to generate problems which require some specified mean time to compute over recent requests recieved, or such.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
Scope out Kuro5hin
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
IMHO, the various phone companies are arms dealers in the telemarketing war. First, they sell caller ID, then anonymous numbers, then a service to block anonymous callers, then a service to get past the block (the last number to call you is 'not known', sure it isn't!), now a way to prevent that. All the while, they KNOW who the telemarketers are, and that many of their customers don't want to hear from them.
It is quite funny when a new telemarketer forgets to buy all the additional services and *69 actually calls them back!
If a telemarketer war-dials you or your company, that may be considered a hostile act of trespass, much as a cracker war-dialling for a modem or portscanning, would be. These are actionable offences, so a telemarketer doing the same thing should fall in the same category.
Telemarketing, where the audio tape has broken or is not being played (poor maintenance, or bad design) -might- qualify as a DoS attack in its own right, as the technicians at the telemarketing company are certainly denying you the service of the phone line, but they're ALSO denying you the service of the telemarketing company, too!
(If anyone tries this last one in court, PLEASE post here a description of the judge's expression when you argue that you're being denied the service of a telemarketing company!)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
A few months back, I received persistant and undesirable telemarketing calls, and decided to do a little bit of research. As it turns out, it's a violation of federal law for telemarketers to continue to call you after you've asked them not to. For each call they make after you've asked them to stop, you're entitled to $500. Certain exceptions apply, but the most obnoxious and persistant telemarketing tactics are illegal and entitle you to monetary compensation.
Many states including Massachusetts, where I live, allow you to sue telemarketers in their small claims court. In small claims court, you can represent yourself, but have the benefit of a judge who is willing and prepared to explain the law to you if you don't have a lawyer. You plead your case in plain English - and anything that the other side has to say will be explained in plain English. If the Telemarketer you're suing is from another state and opts not to appear because of the expense entailed, you win by default. If the person you're suing fails to make good on the judgement, you have a wide variety of collection methods at your disposal including court ordered asset seizure.
However, it's far more likely that the Telemarketer will opt to settle with you rather than show up or default in court. After all, if they owe you $1500 for three undesired calls and it would cost them a few thousand to fly their corporate counsel Massachusetts, obtain a lawyer here, etc., it's very much in their best interests to settle with you for $500 or even $1000.
In my case, the telemarketing firm called me first in November 1999, and then three nights in a row in December. I sent them a demand letter asking for $500 and threatening to sue in Massachusetts small claims court if they did not pay. Just before Christmas, I received a letter of appology and acknoledgement of responsibility and a check for $500. I sent them a thank you letter in which I thanked them for their appology and the $500 payment for the earliest December offense. I hinted that I would attempt to collect the remaining $1000 of their liability if they ever called again.
On March 4th and 5th, I received two more calls from the telemarketing firm, and sent another demand letter this time asking for $1000. On the way to my car on March 24, I found a UPS next day air envelope on my porch, and inside was another appology letter and a check for $1000.
So do yourself a favor. Whenever a telemarketer calls you, find out who you're talking to. Ask them never to call you again, and record their name and the time of call in a log. When they call again, give them another reminder. On the third call, threaten to sue if they don't agree to a favorable settlement.
The spammers cry free speech, and they do have a point. They are allowed their say. This is a sad fact of the Constitution, but it's one we must put up with if we're to continue enjoying the benefits of our own free speech without the fear that those same rights could someday be taken away.
However, don't forget that we also have a right to free speech. The First Amendment isn't just for corporations (much as they'd love to think it were... cough... filters...) So while they have the right to approach us and say their piece, we have the right to then tell them to go away and never bother us again. And thanks to the nation's anti-harassment laws, they then have to agree because we've made it clear.
So in the end, I would propose this. All commercial e-mail, solicited or not, must include a genuine e-mail address to which someone can then reply and opt out. If a user takes this option and ever gets an e-mail from that company again without permission, then the offending e-mail is considered harassment.
I know this won't be popular here, because of the "everybody gets one shot" inherent in it. I admit, I don't like it either. I'd probably feel a rather perverse glee if every telemarketer on the planet were to spontaneously combust right now. But I have my rights, and they have theirs, and we both have to respect each other's, and that's simply the way it's got to be. And yeah, I take a bit of annoying crap from them because of it (with the assurance that I can stop any company from harassing me at any time). It will still cut down on the spam.
On a related note, I also think the US needs a privacy amendment to the Constitution. I do think this is needed to stop the involuntary datamining and tracking done by marketers. It's outright silly that we're the last industrialized nation to not treat privacy as a right, but those are the business lobbies for you. I'd recommend a wording something like this:
1. All United States citizens and residents are recognized to have a right to privacy concerning themselves, their property, and their personal information.
2. Neither Congress nor the States shall make any law permitting the infringement of the rights defined above, except by consent of the person whose rights would be infringed, or when a proper warrant has been issued by a court of law.
3. All laws enacted by Congress which would permit such nonconsensual infringement of the rights defined above are hereby repealed.
My point here is that this, too, would help to cut down on unwanted spam, by making sure that ValueClick's little scheme, and those like it, are illegal unless you agree to be tracked. If you don't want to be tracked, then you simply say so, and you cannot be touched.
No, the system isn't perfect. No system is. The best you can do is create a system in which everyone's rights are respected. These proposals are an attempt at bringing us closer to that goal.
I was particularly impressed with that simple act.
---
So that's what's been happening to me... Seriously, I didn't know they had that kind of equipment. A while ago, someone started calling me time and time again, and there was never anyone on the other end of the line, so I hung up. It got pretty tiresome after a while, let me tell you. Anyhow, after a few days of this, there suddenly was a person on the other end of the line, who wanted to sell me something. Since then, there has been no phone terror... I must be doing something different from most people when I answer my phone, I answered lots of times before it decided not to hang up on me.
Say, that's pretty good. I wish pagers had been popular back when the Moral Majority was a target.
--Jim
I seem to recall maybe twenty years back some liberal group, possibly a gay/lesbian organization, got pissed at some ultra-conservative religious-based organization, possible the (now-defunct thank goodness) Moral Majority, and began a campaign of mass calling the MM's 800 number. The idea was not to deny service through availability, but to drain the MM's pocketbook through long-distance charges. I also remember hearing about solo DoS attacks on 800 numbers in which lone individuals would program their modems to dial the target number repeatedly.
These might also be Urban Legends, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen... check it out.
--Jim
Unless you opted out of being listed in the Yahoo! member directory, you unfortunately made yourself visible to those nefarious folks who harvest such information. Yahoo! doesn't sell email addresses, but they--and any site with a directory, guest book, user group, chat room, or whatever--are regularly harvested for names.
When in doubt, opt out. Yahoo! at least lets you unlist yourself, though it is too late for you now...
An excellent resource on this subject is http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/telemarketing.htm l.
The strategy that I find that works best is that as soon as I realize that it's a sales call, I politely ask who's calling, and write down the name and the telephone number of the caller. I always keep a pad of paper near the telephone. Then, I just tell the person to put me on a do-not-call list, and that's the end of story.
When I started doing that, my telemarketing calls dropped measurably. There aren't that many large telemarketing firms out there. There's quite a few, but not really that many. By using explicit straight language, and acting mature (no screaming or yelling), it sends a signal to them that you don't like getting called for anything, so even if the same telemarketing firm is used again by some other company (companies don't generally telemarket themselves, they contract the job out to a telemarketing firm), they just don't bother calling you any more.
--
That the main argument with spam was that using spam, emailers were passing the costs of their advertising efforts to the customer and the servers in between. With telemarketters and direct mailers, they pay for the priveledge of trying to sell you something. That has to be fair. Otherwise, people will start complaining about all the intrusive ads on their television sets.
Besides that, direct marketers and telemarketers are a LOT more regulated than what seems possible for spammers. There are places where you can submit your name, address, and phone number and effectively "opt out" of all of their promotions. Just about all of the legitamate marketers bounce their lists against those lists in order to lessen their costs (why mail to someone who definetly wont' respond) and to keep in the good graces of the DMA.
The marketers that don't use those lists are another matter... But if they're not concerned with happy customers, the odds are they're peddling nothing but scams.
To loop back to the first paragraph of my response... I don't think that any action can really be taken on a large scale against telemarketers, since they pay in order to reach you. Individuals can opt out. And if you get them on the phone, rather than say "i'm not interested" say "take my number off your list and never call me again". It's either federal law or enacted in many states, when you tell a marketer to cease contact with you, they must abide.
You are then given the option (via touch tone keys)
:)
Wrong approach.
First, as someone else pointed out, they're making money on you from this 'service'. They also charge the telemarketter to be 'unlisted'. At least there's symmetry.
Second, they're still wasting your time. You have to listen, and think, and push buttons. You're already off the crapper, out of the shower, away from the table - interrupted.
The effort of dealing with the process of telemarketting should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the telemerketter. They should deduct (pay) from your long-distance bill for the amount of time they cause you to waste.
Telemarketting should be PROFITABLE to the potential customer. Like getting paid to surf, you should be getting paid to listen to the sales-pitch, on a 'by choice only' manner.
Or maybe, the phone company should offer you a FREE (paid for by the 'Telemarketters Federal Fund ' or something) LCD screen, like the stand-alone callerID box, that will scroll the numbers and deals of the telemerketters... You review them at leisure (or cancel cold, your choice) and call back at the push of a button, those companies or charities that you're actually interested in.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Duh, how do you think AOL and Yahoo make all their money?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
People see their 'to-do' lists and feel it's too much trouble to actually do, while simultaneously feeling 'protected under the law'. In essence, they imply it's *you're* fault for not being diligent.
Furthermore, two minutes of inspection will show you that their advice is flawed. often the very first suggestions on each page are ineffective.
Take their 'script' for dealing with telemarketers, which begins:
So if my sister calls, and I ask this question, and she answer "No", I can sue her?
I love checklists, but his one seems designed to grind you down so you eventually stop asserting your rights. It asks you to do a *lot* more work than is required by law, and adds nothing to your privacy (9 questions if you *don't* want to sue, when all you legally have to do is tell them to put you one their company-wide "do not call" list. 20 steps (not all bulleted) per call if you want to sue) It makes every marketing call exactly the sort of interuption you're trying to avoid. Result: you think it's more prudent to hang up, and your name stays on the list.
Another flawed strategy, the first suggestion on the main page, is to contact the DMA. Compliance with the Direct Marketing Association 'Don't call' list is purely voluntary. Few telemarketers check it (even if they're members of the DMA) and more importantly, it *does not* 'start the clock' on the more stringent actions allowed by law [like suing in small claims].
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
One side benefit about moving every couple of years is that the snail-mail-spam drops off to nothing when you hit the new address!
SPAM, I still can't do much about, besides using mojo@nixon.com to fill in mandatory web registration forms, and I *still* get crap through 2 of my email addresses.
Of course, the unfortunate thing about my last move (July, 1999) was that my current phone number belonged to a computer company: people still call asking for ***** computers, and the first few months of living here junk faxes would ring and ring at all hours of the night.
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I'm fairly sure that a number of laws have been passed that make telemarketing over cellular completely illegal. It is direct theft of service, as the vast majority of cellular calls cost the phone owner by the minute, or the second...... and this used to cost a LOT.
Perhaps my years of reading Adbusters (check it out sometime) has taught me a few things.. and I *try* to practice what I preach.. things like:
- Don't respond to spammers. Ever. Period.
- Don't buy things from companies who's advertising insults your intelligence.
- Don't buy things from companies who's advertising practices annoy you.
- DO NOT LET ADVERTISING INVADE YOUR LIFE. IT doesn't HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
Cancel your cable TV. Go DO something. Even if you don't cancel it, stop watching it! Sure.. watch the news... but cut it down!
The movies? Wait for DVD. Seriously.
Nothing pisses me off more than going to the movies, paying my $10, and exorbitant price for popcorn/soda, and then waiting for 15 goddamn minutes while they put on ADVERTISING! I just don't go anymore. I refuse to pay my own money to see advertising.
Web banners? Sure! No problem!
You know what's good for your community? Watch TV one night, and write down everyone who advertises. Then, go look for alternative products that don't advertise. If you have to advertise it, it must not be that good...
The point, I think, is that, regardless of the method used, a DDOS is a deliberate action taken by an individual/group to disrupt a service. This is just plain wrong. If it's not intentional.. it's not as wrong.
example: You are unloading your moving van, and don't notice that you ahve blocked my driveway.
Are you guilty of blocking my free movement? Not exactly.. it's an accident.
But.. if you park a big truck in front of my driveway with the express purpose of keeping my car in the driveway.. you are directly violating my rights.
(and I might blow up your truck)
Moderators, moderate this up.
This is an excellent idea, and really the kind of service I would like to see from my own telco. A service that caters to the end-user.. not to the telespammers.
BTW, does anyone else feel motivated to start dealing out pain when some telemarketer introduces their spiel by saying "This is just a courtesy call..."
If I am bored and have ample free time, at this point I usually ask "You mean courtesy to me?" This gets them off their script and it's always funny to hear them ad lib. Usually after a couple of minutes of umms and hmms they have to admit that yes, this is a courtesy to me, and then, of course, I ask them to explain how exactly calling me in the middle of my { dinner | lovemaking | preparing for the assassination | meditation | etc.etc. } is courtesy. Can be fun.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
You need the ability to make additional phone charges,
the way 900 numbers can, on home phone numbers. You
could have a pre-ring recording warn callers that,
at your discretion, you can charge them some arbitrary
amount of money. (Sure, you could zap non-telemarketers
too, but you'd just be punishing yourself by scaring
away your friends.)
-------
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
It seems to work reasonably well on slashdot, why not moderate the telephone system? The telephone company could keep track of each subscriber's karma, and refuse to connect any calls when the caller's karma was less than a threshold set by the called party. After each telephone call, the called party could punch in a moderation code on their telephone to increment/decrement the caller's karma.
Since I got my cable modem and cancelled my landline telephone service. It seems telemarketers will not call cell phones for some reason.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
When you get one of those nice spams that ask you to reply that that address with the word remove, it's awfully satisfying to spoof a message from postmaster@.com with a subject of remove.
Ooo! I like this! The only thing that bothers me is that the courts will probably find that it violates the first ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech...") and fourteenth ("...equal protection of the laws...") Amendments to the Constitution.
Besides, knowing Congress, they'd probably want to tax ALL email. (They'll say "It's only fair...")
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Telemarketer: (Thinking he's got a live one): Is Mr. ***** there?
MAP: Uh, he's not here right now. Just leave a message after the beep. (Beep)
T: WTF???
And it really works. My roommate's mother once called up and got this, and later claimed to have *actually had a conversation with me*. [ROFL!]
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
The law should simply forbid forging return addresses. There is precedent in the junk fax mail law. It is illegal to send a fax without including the originating number. That simple fix will eliminate nearly all spam within a week.
Scenario:
1)Spammer fires of 10,000,000 GET FREE PRON notes
2)I open the mail
3)I hit the RETURN TO SENDER button after attaching a 2Meg bitmap of HOT GRITS IN MY PANTS, as do 999,998 others (one person actually thought he could get free porn, but his wife was watching so he moved the note to a different folder for safe keeping)
4)Spammer's ISP get clogged mail servers and cancel the spammers account.
5)Problem solved.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
If you can't trust the state to do it, what makes you think you can trust the Fed to do it?
--The basis of all love is respect
In telemarketing, the advertiser contacts you over the telephone. They, not you, pay for the call. While there are regulations against this, part of the control mechanism for this sort of thing is that the advertiser has to pay for it.
Spam, however, is a neat little thing. Email costs more for the recipient than for the sender, because it's on the hard drive of the recipient (or their ISP) for longer than on the drive of the sender. Basically, they're advertising to you on your dime. Even if you don't pay per MB or per email (who does, today?), the costs of spam are incurred by your ISP. One way or another, you are going to pay for the service of having an average of fifteen MAKE MONEY FAST WITH FREE PR0N messages in your mail queue at any given time.
This is why people started equating email with, of all things, fax machines. There are Federal restrictions on unsolicited fax transmissions, again on the principle of "you don't advertise on the customer's dime". While the long-distance charge on such a call is small (they are short calls), the recipient is paying for paper and ink. Amusingly, the legal definition of a fax machine fit the PC pretty well. So much for the fine print.
--The basis of all love is respect
If email cost more to send to someone you've never sent mail to before, even just a few pennies (whether of money or computing power), spam would not be a problem.
Consider, if nothing else, the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Internet.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Hmmm... didn't even know yahoo *had* chat rooms (not that I would visit them anyway).
>I don't think Yahoo is selling your email addr. Just for "testing", I made a brand new account and never went into a chatroom using the main name. NEVER got a single spam mail on that account.
Well... absoloutly NOTHING has ever been done with this account. No chats, no mail, no postings. Zip, zero, zilch, nil, nada (null, even)...
I *did* check something that said 'please oh please don't list me or let anyone find me', but that never works 8^)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
No, no and no. "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment tells us, to abridge the freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech does not include creation of a public nuisance or misappropriation of other people's property.
There is a large body of legal precedent supporting "time, place, and manner" regulations, provided they pass the following three-part test:
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
that you can install on your phone line, that notices that the incoming caller is blocking their identifying information, and steers them directly to an answering machine?
I would like then to ask them "if you are not a telemarketer, press 1".
Otherwise the phone does not even ring.
I have been looking for either an answering machine that does this or some sort of caller-ID device with this functionality and they do not apparently exist. I would rather "do the job myself", then pay the phone company another overpriced monthly fee.
Simply have the law be that no person or company that engages in, or hires others to engage in, spam, junk faxing, or telemarketing, will be allowed to get a sales licence, commercial zoning permit, or any other licence or permit for commercial activity from the state. A federal version would disallow interstate commerce by any person or company that did so.
This puts no damper on citizens' speech on any topic, and doesn't extend state or federal power at all.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Junk fax laws seem to be pretty reasonable, and some folks have tried to say that they should be applied to e-mail spam too. The case for that seems a little weak; but they might be a good place to start writing new laws for both spam and telemarketing.
OTOH, enforcement of junk fax laws is probably easier than anti-spam ones, since it's pretty darn difficult to fake your originating phone number (ff you can hack SS7, you probably have better things to do with your time than make junk phone calls), and there's a central record of calls (which is very useful for cases of telephone harassment).
There are no technical problems with anti-telemarketing ones, only political ones. Telemarketing is big business, and the one great principle upon which all American politics is founded is "Money Talks".
(<rant>BTW, does anyone else feel motivated to start dealing out pain when some telemarketer introduces their spiel by saying "This is just a courtesy call..." No, if there was any courtesy involved you wouldn't be bothing me, would you?</rant>)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
My pet peeve (right now) is predictive dialing. Their PBX dials a bunch of numbers all at once, and when someone answers, they are patched through to a waiting telemarketer. The problem occurs when there are more answers than telemarketers, so some victims answer the phone to a dead line. A third of my phone calls are dead lines like this, and it ought to be against the law.
(IANAL, but in some readings of the law, it is. There are laws that outlaw war-dialers and harassing phone calls by language like "it is unlawful to dial a phone without the intent to communicate". Shouldn't predictive dialing fall under this?)
Of course, there is the bonus that with predictive dialers, the telemarker doesn't hear your initial "hello". If you ever call my house, and you don't respond to my initial "hello" (or respond with a "hello?" that sounds like "is anyone there?"), expect to be hung up on.
--
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
Hrm. I'm reminded of a time I was stranded in the airport in Little Rock. I was trying to make a collect call back to Canada, and AT&T does their collect call stuff all by computer/automated voice, so that when it calls the person, there's a two-second delay, and then the computer voice kicks in asking if they want to accept the charges. Well, I kept trying to make my collect call, but the guy I was calling kept hanging up before the computer voice would kick in! That got really old really fast.
There is an organization, the DMA (Direct Marketing Association, http://www.the-dma.org), that offers their Mail, Telephone, and E-mail Preference Services. They are designed for catalogers and telemarketers, and now e-mail advertisers, to match their lists against and drop those names on the service. So, if you are on the preference list, *reputable* companies will drop you from their lists. Of course this does not force companies to use the list, since the DMA is a self-regulated body, but it does encourage compliance.
t ml
At least it's a start...
The DMA Privacy top page.
http://www.the-dma.org/library/privacy/index.sh
:P
Be honest: we do not need laws to keep these things off of us. I don't get much spam, and what I do I can generally trace back to some website or other I signed up for voluntarily. I can filter it if it gets bad, opt out, I can hang up on telemarketers. If someone doesn't identify themselves on Caller ID (and that bothers you), let the machine filter it, most direct dialing in my area is done by a computer that hangs up if it hears an answering machine. DoS has technical solutions; some have been proposed, I'm sure others are being worked on, and the slowest technical solution will be faster coming and more effective when it gets here than the best law Congress can pass. Congress and the state legislatures should worry about important things, like health care and the fate of Cuban toddlers, and leave us alone to solve our own minor problems.
Communication is only possible between equals
Spam and telemarketing can be stopped, easily.
I have rule: I never buy anything I hear about from either spam or telemarketing. If I already use a service, I stop. I call the businesses and tell them -- they often don't know how much people hate telemarketeers.
(To the caller: "Have you considered taking up prostitution so that your mother could be proud of you?")
I never even read SPAM, unless it comes from a business I already patronize.
In this case, I let the business know I will NEVER use their produces/services again.
I keep a note book so that I can keep these promises.
If any significant number of people adopted these rules SPAM and telemarketing would die overnight.
Lew
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
A lot of internet companies are basically doing this already - paying customers to look at ads. My personal favorite is jackpot.com.
Can your IM do this?
I just thought I would point out the review here a few weeks back of Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Century. by Simson Garfinkel. He gives some attention to the possible consequences of the increasing coalescing of information about us. I'm about two thirds of the way through it and there are no general ideas that aren't familiar ground for long time readers of the Risks Forum and the Privacy Forum, although there are some frighten examples that were new to me. However, if you need a book to explain to Mom why you are concerned about privacy issues, this is a good one.
The net will not be what we demand, but what we make it. Build it well.
- The telescum can call me to the phone several times a day, without telling me who they are.
- The telescum hang up on me, without giving me any opportunity to get on their do-not-call list and stop them from doing it again.
- The telescum do not pass any information to my telco's phone switch, so my call-trace won't work. (I'd report them as chronic harassers and try to get their service cut off, but this is next to impossible if there is no way to trace the call to back up the report.)
This problem is caused by the phone system allowing these scum to connect without passing proper ID information, and the lack of laws at the Federal level about telephone harassment. If they were forced to ID, I could block them with hardware that recognizes their name or phone number. If they had to report their phone number to the local telco switch, I could use call-trace to enter a report of harassment. If they were forced to actually have someone talk to me or otherwise give me the chance to get on their do-not-call list if I picked up the phone, I could get rid of them that way. But nothing makes them do that, so they can make me drop what I'm doing ten times before I get a chance to tell the live piece of talking pond scum at the other end that they should put me on the DoNotCall list and then kindly FOAD.And that sucks.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I've never gotten a lot of phone spam - the bulk of it was from telephone companies and newspapers, and they're pretty good about obeying don't-call-list rules. (The rules, and their databases, aren't bright enough to prevent them from calling multiple phones at the same house, but my second line is usually either busy or answers with modem tone and usually has the phone ringer turned off.) Some of the new telespam machines are pretty insidious, but the "hello ... 2 second pause" usually gets them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Isn't this bad like SPAM e-mails? I know that if you reply to remove from SPAM e-mails, then the spammers know your e-mail address is legit and pass it to other companies. Can't telemarketers do the same if they are told to remove your phone number?
I look forward to hearing for replies.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Damn, I wish it was the same and easy for e-mails :(.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Can large number of flames from Slashdotters to be considered spam?
The best way is to order the free CDs and not purchase the required one. Nothing gets you off the list like being a delinquent. By the way, don't use your real name.
Would it be possible for the phone company to offer a service that either before the number rings or immediately after a connection has been established a computerized voice says "No solicitors"? Either that or a tone (because the phone companies seem really attached to them.) I know I'd pay about $5 a month for that.
Especially if they had to be obeyed like the signs.
A law should be passed that requires anyone sending unsolicited bulk email to pay postage to the U.S. Government.
This would be relatively easy to regulate and enforce. You (spammer) pay the postage. Prorate according to message size in bytes. The government gives you a bunch of unique codes. Each message you send must contain a code. You (recipient) could challenge whether the sender of an email has paid postage by forwarding the mail to the governent. If it's an unauthorized or duplicate (or nonexistent) mail code, the spammer gets canned. Maybe someone has a better idea than this, but the main point is that it shouldn't be hard to enforce such an obligation.
The government gets an Internet tax.
The spammer gets to send mail.
You and I may get some junk mail sometimes, but we don't have to worry about the Internet email system simply collapsing from abuse.
Of course, you retain the right to reject your mail outright. Just because someone puts a stamp on something doesn't mean you're obliged to open and read their message.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
After I hung up on them they even called me right back
...
;)
Ha, I remember a few years back the entreprenurial chimney sweeps called, it went something like this:
(ring)
Person on phone: Hi, Mr Jawonokowitz?
Me: It's Jankowski
Person on phone: I'm from "Fly By Night" chimney sweeps and
Me: Not interested (Hang up phone)
4 seconds later...
(ring)
Person on phone: Oh hi again Mr Jankowitz, I just wanted to let you know that...
Me: Look, I'm very busy, I'm not frigging interested. (Hang up phone)
4 seconds later...(ring)
Person on phone: Hey, you could at least talk to me with respect, I'm not...
Me: Hey you FUCKING ASSHOLE, stop calling me! (hang up phone)
4 seconds later...(ring)
Person on phone: How dare you talk to me that way? What gives you the...
Me: Call me back again and I'm calling the police you stupid minimum wage piece of shit! (hang up)
And that did it. See it's not hard, I guess that telemarketing company didn't have much experience in dealing with us pleasant-mannered New Jersey people
Here's a great website for disecting those headers and automatically notifying abuse@spammer.com for you. It's called SpamCop, and certainly beats the 'ol nslookup and whois.
ÕÕ
Here's my personal problem:
If one calls and asks for Michael Roberto, I have to answer and say yes, because there's a good possibility that its Ohio State (the school I am going to this fall), or one of the other schools that I rejected. Then I *have* to hear the telemarkter, at which i take the necessary process if it's not OSU.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
While reading this, a telemarketer called. I told her to take me off their list.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
me: (talking to someone in room) ya gook amaton telefona goanooa ga foona
(to telemarketer) he is not speaking the english, i will to be translating for you
telemarketer: i'm calling today to tell you about our low introductory rate for the discover gold platinum card... (etc)
me: (to someone in room) yamma dinnga og la ponuma gaylay discover ye plantuim gold alkaka fon dingadingadinga do par qoo (etc)
(hold phone away, now the other person in room talking) kaka holaapop! yohga harlima goarboopa lamerasay godda dingaliglalinga fart! danka tochinea gooka joibers!
(to telemarketer) mr metzger is wishing me to be informing you that he wishes you to take card and stick it in your bumhole
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
They use autodialers too. The key is to trim the autodial level so that no caller spends too much time without someone at the other end, while at the same time there must always be someone ready to take the call once the connection is made.
('Course your average call-o-matic service would not care of the latter, since they get paid to make N calls, not to get N calls to non-pissed off persons.)
If more people would start doing the "two seconds then hang up" routine, the telemarketers would simply trim the response time down to one second. It would cost a little more, maybe drive out the worst scum, but not fix anything.
BTW offtopic: If you are looking for bitter enemies to the telemarketers, try (serious) survey companies. The one I worked for has a good reputation, so most people recognoized them and answered. However as more and more telemarketing is performed, it is increasingly difficult to get interview time. We are reaching the point where it does not pay to try to be ethic when mass-calling. Since those with a clue block their phones due to the telespamming, the only option left is to raise the volume to get more suckers.
All opinions are my own - until criticized
For what it's worth, when I told AT&T to remove me from their call list, they were very polite, removed me immediately and sent me a letter confirming my removal with a number to call if I was ever contacted by them again so there are some companies who take it very seriously.
- tokengeekgrrl
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions
But if you raise the issue of first amendment, it brings up a very interesting point. Is a phone call considered free speech? I forget which one of the early forefathers or historically significant figures it was - who said something like "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it". I know I haven't gotten it right. But in any case, the point is, you can say whatever you like, and I can't stop you from saying it. But I think I should have a right to not listen to it. Just like all the people who complain about offensive TV and/or radio shows - they could choose not to tune in, but they should have no rights to bar the people broadcasting the message. My phone is very specifically a personal communication device, as is my e-mail address, so I'd believe. I think that I should be entitled to being able to prevent people from using it for their free speech, because I cannot really choose not to "tune in".
Can you see any problems with my argument? Do you know of any legislation that covers what I'm talking about (because I can't think of any myself).
Everyone put in anti-spam stuff in their e-mail address here at slashdot, so obviously, it's because everyone don't want to be spammed, because there must be programs out there that scrape the e-mail addresses from web pages, right?
Well, what's to prevent an unscrupulous person who may work at an ISP or at one of the major exchanges to tap the e-mail messages being relayed? Now, I don't know enough about the way e-mail works in the backend to know if it is possible. But the assumption is, if there's e-mail being sent, then the originator and/or the destination will contain valid e-mail addresses. What's to prevent people who happen to relay all this e-mail traffic from extracting all the valid e-mail addresses within, and pass the e-mail off normally? This is one way for them to get huge quantities of valid e-mail addresses. Has there been anything like this?
I think that all of this ties in with the privacy issue as well. We don't like to have our information hanging out there, with anybody being able to pick up what we bought or did, where we were (online or in the real world) and when. Telemarketers (as far as I know, and or so I would assume) don't just dial sequential blocks of numbers, they usually have a list of numbers that they obtained from somewhere, just to save themselves a little bit more time and money. I know there are systems out there that just does brute-force sequential block dialing, and only connect the telemarketer is someone actually picks up the call, just as in spamming, there must be mailers out there that just tries out all the shorter e-mail name combination of large e-mail domains such as hotmail and yahoo. But I think for the most part, real addresses and real telephone numbers are important to the telemarketers and the people who sell them these lists. And that, to me, seems to be more of a privacy issue than an annoyance issue.
On a side note: How many people have gotten spam that says: If you do not want to receive any further e-mail like this, send mail to...? How many people actually do it? I don't do it because I think that it would just validate my address to them, that there's actually a person who checks his e-mail at this address. What do you think?
Mmmmmm....that smells good...
*RING*
fuck.
- Mailing list removal
- Telephone junk call removal
- Spam list removal
I'm listed with all three, and I get very few junk phone calls, despite a listed number. Junk snail mail still comes in, but not much of it.signing up The DMA's "anti-spam service" seems to have had zero effect. I don't think their domain-wide removal service does anything at all.If you answer your phone with something other than "Hello", the "answering machine detector" in most telemarketing predictive dialers will hang up the call. Really. The "Hello detector" is dumb, but able to distinguish "Hello" from a longer message. Try answering with your name and you'll start hearing hang-ups.
Any Australians out there can contact The Australian Direct Marketing Association. The Consumer Help section allows you to be taken off direct marketing lists. I am not sure how well this works as I have only recently done it. I also don't know how responsible their members are.
What happens then is that a digitized voice tells the person to not call again/be removed from their list, etc.
It doesn't stop them from calling but at least you don't have to talk to them.
"Drug related crime" is a misnomer, "prohibition related crime" is the more accurate and correct phrase.
Also, I actually know a great deal about the laws regulating telemarketers (although certainly not as much as you probably have probably learned in the course of your research). A useful link you might want to put online as your site progresses is for the free Enigma software (which I first read of on Lockergnome which is just a little program that helps you keep track of and respond to telemarketers, letting you quote relevant laws.
The main problem you seem to have with my comment is, I believe, the same that several others have had - with my third point. Unfortunately, I think it may be a misunderstanding, because I did not quote the original article thoroughly enough before responding to it. When I said "no, no, no," I was responding to the question about whether "such behavior" could be "combatted." But if you go back to the original article, you'll see that Cliff was writing about whether laws like those that protect you from phone harassment (from pranksters instead of telemarketers) could also be used against DDOS attackers. I definitely don't think that's a good idea. And I greatly fear that the guaranteed protections of free speech will become dangerously entangled with computer code (indeed, they already are), which could provoke unfortunate unexpected consequences for both programmers and law enforcement.
Finally, one last point about something you wrote: "doesn't realize that the First Amendment and all the legal precedents set by the Supreme Court deal with INDVIDUALS and that telemarketers are calling on the behalf of a corporation/company. The activities of a company CAN be and ARE regulated, including what they CAN and CANNOT SAY."
I'm sorry to say you are incorrect. The distinction is not between individuals and corporations. There are no special rules on companies, or other corporate bodies. In fact, the word "corporate body" is redundant - the word "corporation" etymologically means "body," because a corporation is treated like a single person, rather than a mere association of individuals. Congress cannot make special laws restricting the speech of corporations.
However, Congress can make laws restricting the actions of individuals and corporations - and the Supreme Court has ruled in cases since about the days of WWI that certain things that are literally "speech" are actually actions - such as yelling fire in a crowded theather - and can thereby be regulated. The regulations and restrictions placed on telemarketers are not placed on their freedom of speech, but rather on their freedom to take certain "actions." If you were an individual (and not a corpoation) soliciting for money over the phone during restricted times of day, I bet you could be punished the same way a corporation would be.
Thanks very much for your thoughtful comments. And I very much look forward to watching your telemarketing pages progress.
Yours,
A. Keiper
Washington, D.C.
Thanks for your reply, though. In writing this reply, I clicked on your user info, and saw that you ended one of your previous comments with "If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example." Right on.
Yours,
A. Keiper
Washington, D.C.
On mail and on junk phone calls, the advertiser pays. The phone company and the postal services makes money on this.
Fight Spammers!
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
Mickonline dun said:
Dear Mickonline:
I would be extremely interested to know which telemarketing firm you worked for.
I would like to know this, because if they ever call me I want to be able to nail their balls to the wall. >:)=
You see...your company engaged in two flatly illegal practices.
Firstly...if someome requests that they be placed on your "do not call" list, by law you must maintain that list for ten years. Furthermore, if they also request that you send them your "do not call" policy, you are again required by law to send that to them. (FWIW--you are required to have a "do not call" policy--it's quite illegal to operate without one.)
More info on the law and legal requirements for telemarketers here. Please note that should you violate the law and you run into someone sufficiently pissy (such as myself), such fsck-ups as NOT adding my name to your do-not-call list can be expensive (victims are entitled to sue for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense [i.e. you knew damn well what you were doing was wrong]...in most states you may sue for up to $1500 in small claims court (no lawyers required), most courts will give summary judgement in favour of the plaintiff if nobody from the telemarketing firm shows up, the court can send a summons to pay the fine Or Else, and court judgements in your favour look very nice in formal complaints to the FCC asking them to Please Shut The Mother-Fsckers Down. :)
The second illegal practice is redlining--purposely blocking out low-income or minority neighbourhoods. (Yes, if you are dealing with finances at all, redlining is illegal in the US. Same if you're dealing in real estate, insurance, etc.--a bank here in Kentucky just got smacked rather hard because it was found that it was redlining low-income minority communities in terms of house loans.) Trust me that if it is ever found out by the feds your former company does this, they might end up not being able to so much as loan a homeless person two bucks for a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. :) Redlining is still unfortunately common, but the authorities (such as HUD, federal banking regulators, etc.) are becoming far less tolerant of it.
(As an aside--just FWIW, I'm merely writing as a Private Joe who has little tolerance for discrimination (I grew up in a low-income part of the Louisville metro area that was constantly being shat on by the city--literally being used as their dumping grounds for garbage and minimalls and the airport because they figured "the poor hicks in the south part ain't gonna bitch") and little to no tolerance for telemarketers (I literally don't accept calls from telemarketers and survey agencies unless it is from a survey agency that I have called first and who will give me stuff like free food, etc. for my time and trouble :)--even political surveys, I will deliberately give BS answers just to skew their statistics), not to mention junk mailers (I freely admit to using spamtrap names and/or addresses if I must give personal info out--both for email AND snail-mail). Unless you REALLY make it worth my time, don't bother contacting me--if I want to get a service from you, I'll contact you, thank you. :)
(Part of why I am so pissy on this is I've had to deal with Bad Telemarketers like Chemlawn, who literally refused to get off the phone even after I had told them five times that I was not interested, I wanted on their do-not-call list, and I actually WANTED weeds to grow in my yard because I was setting up a nature sanctuary (!). AND they had the audacity to call back a week later, upon which I asked to speak to their supervisor and gave them an earful. They have not called back since.)
It's rather easy to keep from getting telemarketing calls:
1) Use the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list, please remove me from any lists you may sell to other telemarketing agencies, and please mail me a copy of your do not call policy." (The last two are important, because they show you aren't fscking about and it gives the telemarketers more rope to hang themselves by. :)
2) If they get pissy or call you afterwards, ask to speak to the manager (after getting the telemarketer's name, of course). Explain the law to the manager, and ask him at each point if he is aware that:
He must maintain a do-not-call list for 10 years
He must maintain a do-not-call policy and send it on request
He must remove your name from lists sold to other telemarketing agencies on request
He must not call before 9 am local time or after 9 pm local time
If they do not do the above, they are liable under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense (they knew what they were doing).
Then state, clearly, the spiel in 1) above and state that you are putting them on notice that if they don't send the do-not-call policy and/or they call you at ALL in the next ten years, you will be taking them to small claims court for willful violation of the TCPA. Document all this info including time of the call, etc.
3) If they are the least bit naughty to you (i.e. they call again, fail to mail a do-not- call policy, etc.) then sue the bastards. :) Most telemarketers won't show up in court, it costs anywhere from free to around fifty dollars to file a case in small claims court, and you get anywhere from $500 to $1500 per offense--in a way, it really IS a way to "make money fast". :) Courts will handle collections, by the way--if they don't pay, they suddenly become more in trouble (read: contempt of court--in the worst case, the CEOs can be jailed till they pay up).
4) Investigate your state's telemarketing laws and see if there's even MORE stuff you can use against them. (In Kentucky, for instance, there are actual CRIMINAL penalties for violating the laws--we also have stricter time-of-day requirements (no calls before 10 am), a statewide "do-not-call" list maintained by the Attorney-General that uses "asterisked-numbers" listed in the phone book, and it is illegal to telemarket using a recording (you MUST speak to a live human within five seconds of the call, or they just broke Kentucky law).) Check with your Attorney-General's office, or look under your state's name and "consumer protection".
5) There are some phone services very useful in avoiding telemarketers (and in some cases, tracing just WHERE they got your name). Availability varies from state to state--check with your telco. Among them:
Having your phone listing under an obviously false pseudonym (Joe Dredd, Fred Flintstone, George Jetson, etc.)
Unpublished numbers--more expensive but invaluable in not only avoiding a lot of telemarketing calls but also in tracing the sellers of numbers--some telemarketers actually buy their number lists from the phone company. (It is a good idea in general to explicitly inform the phone company that you want on their do-not-call list and you want your name removed from all lists they sell to other parties.)
Various Caller ID packages such as Anonymous Call Block (in some areas it DOES block telemarketers--in Kentucky, for instance, they have to provide a number on Caller ID by law), Unknown Number Verification (dial a number before you can talk to the person), etc.
In some states, like Florida and Kentucky, there are statewide do-not-call lists. Call your telco or Attorney-General's office for more info.
6) Junkbuster's Telemarketer's Script is invaluable for documenting telemarketing calls (among other things, it lists the questions you need to ask if you want to "make money fast" from telemarketers if/when they misbehave ;). For that matter, the entire telemarketing section is invaluable IMHO. (A wee note--I'm not entirely unbiased. I've had very good results, even at my old place, with their tips--I happen to be the client they're quoting. ;) This was at a residence that'd get 4-10 telemarketing calls a DAY, mind--getting them whittled to one or two a week was a major accomplishment, one done largely through Junkbuster's tips. Oh, and BTW, their script IS GPL'd--you can tweak it to your liking (to include state laws, etc.) as long as you give 'em credit.)
7) There are actual devices, such as one sold by Public Citizen, that basically have a button one can press to automagically give the "add my number to your do not call list" spiel. (By Grud, they use machines like predictive dialers--why shouldn't you? ;) Most of these are around $30 US or so--links here (for Phone Butler) or here (for Phone Filter. There are several devices of this type around, some even being sold at stores like Service Merchandise and Sears--shop around.
8) If you've got Winblows (or Wine--I see no real reason why it couldn't work unde Wine) you might take a look at Engima, which is a nice little proggie to let you fill out the script on computer. (There is a Mac version linked from the site; I see no reason why a Linux version couldn't possibly be developed somehow.)
9) The ultimate in deterrance of telemarketers (at least if you've got ADSL or cable-modem service) is probably doing away with the landline and getting a cell phone. Telemarketing calls to cell phones are illegal in the US, and most areas give cell phones their own exchanges so that telemarketers can filter them out.
Again--these are just tactics (well, besides 7-9; I run Linux, like the pleasure of bitching out the telemarketers myself, and neither Insight@Home nor Hellsouth ADSL are much of options--I'm waiting for more competition in Louisville's ADSL market because I can get it cheaper than through Hellsouth) I've used, and quite successfully--if you start these at the moment you get a phone line, and adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards telemarketers, you CAN eventually wipe out telemarketing calls from your lines altogether. (No, I am not making this up. On my (unpublished, Caller-ID-enabled, anon-call-blocked, statewide-do-not-call-listed, with-me-leading-the-war-on-telemarketers on the other end armed with Junkbusters script in hand should they get through THAT flotilla of "leave me alone" deterrance) I've actually succeeded in making it where I don't get telemarketing calls. It helps a lot that Kentucky does have additional laws; it also helps that the numbers are unpublished (they can't even get them through Directory Assistance--the only way they get them is if Hellsouth sells the numbers) and the three companies that have had the audacity to telemarket these numbers in the year I've had them got it made COMPLETELY plain that I do not want calls, EVER, and I entirely mean to clue-by-four them into submission should they ever forget that. ;) It IS possible to live free from Telemarketing Hell, though. (One must sometimes be a bitch, yes. Sometimes bitchiness is necessary. Most get the point with just 1), though. The later steps are for if they have proven themselves Naughty, like Chemlawn or the company mickonline apparently worked for. ;)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
Right, but the problem is that the harassment has already taken place when you receive the FIRST phone call. It should be an "opt-in" situation rather than an "opt-out" procedure.
:)
The other problem is that I have two roomies. I can't ask for their names to be removed legally, so I get stuck receiving the same phone call from the same company 15 times until they do reach my roomie. Sure, I could claim to be him, and ask that they stop calling, etc. but I'm sure that I'd do that only to find it was someone calling to offer him a job or somesuch, and I'd look like an ass.
For the last week, I have had a new service from US Worst, er West, that forces anyone who has their caller ID information blocked to speak their name and push a button. Then my phone rings with a distinctive ring, and I hear their name, and can opt to take the call or not. You can also put 25 numbers on a list to let through, if your parents have an unlisted number, etc.
The result? We've gotten only one telemarketing call in the last week, and that was from the University that I work asking my roomie to donate to the senior class project. They got through because the caller ID said "University of Northern Iowa". This is a DRAMATIC decrease from what was three calls per day before getting the service.
I don't work for US West, or hold any stock or anything stupid like that, and this is kind of pricey at $10 a month, but that includes caller ID service too, which is nice if you don't have it already. Since most of the telemarketers have automatically dialed phones, they can't get through the speak your name and push a button ordeal to reach us, which is just fine with me.
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
I like the idea of SPAMtraps. Leaving an email address on a web page (and nowhere else) with explicit instructions that the use of this email address costs the sender $500. When you receive email on that account file a claim in small claims court. Either the spammer will have to defend themselves, or they will have to give you money. Both of these cost the spammer money and discourage spamming.
Thank you for not thinking.
Once, when I had Jury duty I went to McDonalds for breakfast. While I was there I saw a man standing at the pay phone with a moderate sized day planner looking device. He speed dialed number after number while I waited for my McMuffins and as I ate them. The next day he was there again, same time, same place.
Although I couldn't hear him it was apparant that he was a telemarketer. It's my theory that using a pay phone was enough to get *something* to appear on caller ID, and since it was a pay phone all he had to do was move to another location and you'd have a bitch of a time proving that it was the same guy/company calling you again.
How do you pass such a law? How do you enforce it? A cop listening in on every phone call?
What will stop this COLD IN IT'S TRACKS is this. I'll share with you the tools of my one man crusade against telemarketers.
1. NEVER BUY ANYTHING-if they have to spend more money on calls and people to make them than they recoup then they'll stop using that method.
2. Keep them on the phone as long as possible. If you can play with them, get them to go over everything time and time again they have less time to move on to more fertile ground. I have a friend whose personal best is 24 minutes. Mine is closer to 10.
3. As bad as it may sound, don't even give to charities when they use telemarketers. The ends can NOT justify the means, ever, even if they're the good guys.
4. Make them think that you're going to buy something, when they start asking for your information, reverse it on them. Ask for their name, employer, employer's address and employer's telephone number. Say it's because you're afraid of fraud. When they give you this information, write it down.
5. After you get all of their information tell them that you do not wish to ever be contected by them again, remind that that according to US federal law they can be held liable for up to $500 if they call you again.
6. Get Caller ID. When you see "Anonymous Call" or "Out of Area" be prepared to deal with a telemarketer.
I'm not naive, I know that most people will not do these things, but it's not the point if I can do my part I'm happy.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
US West really has brass ones, selling "privacy products" when their network is at the same time allowing telemarketers to opt out of caller ID broadcast. Sure, you can set your caller ID to "blocked" when you dial out, but not to "unknown". It made a little sense back when Caller ID was less universal, but I see a phone number these days even for out-of-state calls, but for telemarketers it's still "Name Unknown, Number Unknown". US West makes money on both sides; pretty damn sleazy.
Spam and DDoS are two fundamentally different activities. DDoS is malicious in intent, and has no constructive purpose. Spam is a form of (very obnoxious) advertising, and does have a legitimate purpose (I'm not saying the ends justify the means, though).
;-) already illegal. Spam is kinda illegal in some places, but different laws should apply to each.
DDoS is AFAIK (IANAL
I personally think that we should just maintain a database of the home phone numbers and addresses of the execs of all companies responsible for spam, and politely call them (once) for each piece of spam they send, asking them to stop. Nothing illegal about that, and they get a taste of their own medicine... Anyone volunteer to collect the data and maintain the database?
to the best of my knowledge, if you tell a telemarketer to take your name of their list, they are obligated by law to do so. If they call again after you have told them this, I believe you can take them to small claims court for about $500.
The laws are there, they just aren't being enforced.
Mark
What? That's totally wrong, at least in the U.S. No laws have been passed by Congress restricting spam, and the few state laws that have been passed have been thrown out by the courts as violating constitutional free speech protections. Cliff, what protections do you think you have against spam? There are none. Please, I beg you, prove me wrong - log onto Thomas and find a law that protects you from spam.
(2) "Just wondering if the laws under which the U.S. Government is pursuing the DDoS attacks on Yahoo! and Amazon could be applied to telemarketers."
No, the laws being used to "pursue" the DDOS attackers are actually more akin to laws that would apply to grafitti artists or arsonists. They are not laws about "using a public network to bother end users."
As others have noted here, the technology is improving (in some areas) to combat telemarketers. And the technology to combat spam is improving, too. But there are bigger worries than these nuisances - and we should be more concerned about more important personal information than our e-mail addresses and our phone numbers.
(3) "Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?"
No, no and no. "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment tells us, to abridge the freedom of speech. That first amendment protects lots of things that are odious to many people - including, despite the best efforts of some wrong-headed Members of Congress, flag burning.
Imagine that a law is written preventing unsolicited commercial calls. What happens if I accidentally dial your phone number in an attempt to complete a solicited commercial call - can you prosecute me? What other forms of communication should be regulated next? Perhaps TV ads, for destroying your tranquility and peace of mind by letting commercialism interfere with your entertainment?
There are already strict laws regulating what you can say and spend in political campaigns. There are already strict laws in some areas against billboards. But how far do you want to go to abridge others' right to communicate - all in the name of avoiding a nuisance?
A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society
Washington, D.C.
In my area (Chicago) the telco is offering a new(ish) service where any caller who's phone number is NOT presented by caller id is asked to introduce themselves via a short recording. THEN your phone rings and you hear the recording. You are then given the option (via touch tone keys) to accept the call, reject the call, or reject the call informing the caller you don't want to hear from them again (to be used in the case of a telemarketer).
The basic idea of SS7 is reasonably simple; it's a protocol to tell telephone switches how to connect voice lines together to make a voice circuit. The implementation, however, is very complicated (because of over a century's worth of cruft) and will hurt your brain. Anyway, one of the message fields in a call setup is the telephone number that originated the call.
If you pay the telephone company for Caller ID, they'll send you that info modulated onto the ring signal (unless the caller has requested Caller ID blocking); or if you dial a certain code (*57? I forget) immediately after a harassing call they'll record the number and pass it on to the police. People with toll-free numbers also get a list of the calling numbers.
The "keep them on the line so we can trace the call" bit you see on cop shows predates the use of computer-controlled digital switches. Forget about it. The call is "traced" before the it is even connected.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Another very effective technique keys on the fact that it's a computer that's actually doing the calling. If your telephone picks up and starts talking constantly, then the computer knows it has an answering machine and disconnects.
/do/ get trapped into talking with one, I am polite enough to say, "No thanks, I'm not interested," etc.)
But if your telephone picks up, says something brief ("Hello?") and waits, then the computer knows it has reached a victi^H^H^H^H^Hhuman, and transfers the line over to a human telemarketer. The time it waits for silence plus the transfer time is just over two seconds.
So pick up your phone, say hello, and if you don't get an answer in two seconds, hang up. I've been doing this for months and have never had any complaints from friends about accidentally hanging up on them -- two seconds in which to respond is a lot longer than it sounds. Every human-to-human call I've ever had has started off within that window of time.
Is this rude to the telemarketers? Fuck 'em; they're the ones interrupting my dinner, my shower, my time with friends. (If I
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Such laws will, eventually be written. Such laws can, trivially, be written. (Soviet Russia had no telemarketing problem)
The question we ought to be asking is: when such laws are written, what other important freedoms will they be used to restrict?
Since slashdot readers are, it would seem, quite keen on sending large volumes of email to people with different views on intellectual property law to themselves, you ought to be wary about this. If Be, Corel, and the Holland, Michigan Public Library system were to have access to such a law, then there could be trouble for all concerned.
How inconvenient is it to deal with telemarketers? How inconvenient is it to live in a society with no free speech?
I'll answer the second question for you; for a lot of the people on slashdot, it would not be inconvenient at all. No regime in history has put people in jail for mindlessly parroting the party line.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I've been thinking about putting together a page on telemarketing, I've been doing a lot of research and found out a lot of crap lately. I wish I had because there's no way I can post everything here!
:)
A few really crappy things about the telemarketing industry:
1) They hire prisoners. I personally am not making any decision on the merit of this process, so let's not get into a big debate about that. The thing that I take exception to is that they don't really monitor these prisoners well and convicted rapists, etc are using these telemarketing companies to contact minors and attempt to establish a "relationship" of some form with them.
I must admit I have a personal interest in this - my girlfriend (I'm 18, she's 16) was recently conned by a telemarketer (I've since seen the transcript of the conversation - this dude was SLICK...I think even a genius geek like myself might've fallen for it) who managed to get her name from her...he then used the data the telemarketing company gave him to write her a letter. Turns out this fellah is a convicted felon in the Utah State Pen...and this wasn't exactly a "Hi, how ya doin`, my name's Bob" sort of letter. Her mom saw it and freaked and has since contacted the Utah State Prison people...they've been really helpful, but the company that hires these prisoners, Sandstar (Who happens to run http://www.familyfilms.com of all sites!) has basically said "We're terribly sorry" and then continued business as usual - and this kind of stuff happens OFTEN. ABC News in Utah said they were interested in the story, but they wanted to finish up one they were already working on involving the same thing happening to a girl from Utah with another company & prison!
2) This is the part that really pisses me off. Lots of people have posted about the "do not call lists" - this is a part of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (Which the FTC is currently reviewing - check http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/02/tsr.htm - they ARE accepting public comments via email but only until Thursday April 27th, 2000). The TSR means well but it's NOT WORKING. Try bringing up charges in a small claims court against a company for violating the TSR by calling you after you were asked to be placed on the do not call list. These companies disappear, change names, go under, merge, etc so often that by the time the case comes up, you have no hope of even getting the 500$. Plus they often use delaying tactics because by law after 24 months they can purge their records.
The telemarketing industry is VERY screwed up. I have already put together a 10 page analysis of this all and the Telemarketing Sales Rule and all the problems with it but that might be a bit excessive to post here.
OT: Anyone else noticed that is dying? I haven't seen that used much at all lately...it's just so much more versitile and less AOL-ish than
Anywayz, I've posted my comment at:
http://www.galahad.cx/FTCComment.html
and the original message her mother sent out asking people to be wary of this practice at:
http://www.galahad.cx/OriginalMessage.txt
Please read them and feel free to email me about some of the efforts I'm organizing to get the Telemarketing Sales Rule patched up so that this and many other practices will at least be regulated. Or even email the FTC as detailed at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/02/tsr.htm with your comments sometime before April 27th - we can use all the help we can get. And the Telemarketing Sales Rule covers ALL aspects of telemarketing, so feel free to comment on anything and everything about it on your mind, just please don't flame them too much.
Oh, and galahad.cx is my little 486 Linux box on a cable modem, so it might be kinda slow to respond at times. Sorry!
Why not ban unsolicited commercial direct marketing? What would happen?
Well, the US Post Office would get an exemption on the grounds that junk mail subsidises other mail (or at least it should; I'm not sure if it's really not the other way around).
For phone, fax, and email direct marketing, a new business would be created. Consumers would get paid to opt-in. You could fill out a marketing demographic survey, and then you would get a credit on your phone bill paid for by the direct marketers who called you.
With opt-in systems, consumers get paid for putting up with advertising. Those who don't want the advertising pay their own way. This is already happening with ISPs. This is also how TV works (you can get free TV with ads, or premium/rental services without).
actually, it's pretty easy. do not hang up, do not yell, do not curse... very nicely say "please put this number on your company wide 'do not call' list". http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/telemarketing.htm l for a full explanation it works..