Disconnecting Telemarketers

Anonymous Scientist at UMass sent in a story about opt-out telemarketing laws, and several people submitted this story about a spam bill in the Senate. New York's telemarketing law does work - since we put our number on the list, we've gotten a couple of calls from charities (not covered by the law) and a couple of calls from Time-Warner Cable, asking us to sign up for cable. Time-Warner's calls would be banned, except that we have a pre-existing business relationship with them - you see, we already have cable. Update: 05/18 15:30 GMT by M : Oh, and if you live in New York: NYNoCall.com.

Comments

Re:Scams

[shaldannon]

Well...once when I was a missionary in California City, I got a call from someone alledging to be from the Bakersfield FOP. He asked if I would be interested in giving them money. I replied with "I'm a missionary, so I don't have a whole lot of money...but if you're interested, I could arrange to have some missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints some share a message about Jesus Christ." He hung up pretty quickly...

And if you live in Texas

[Serk]

And if you live in Texas - http://www.texasnocall.com/

And for what it's worth, it works, my spam-calls have gone to nearly zero (I still get charity calls)... The other thing to cut way down on spam-calls is this magic phrase - 'Please put me on your do not call list. Thank you.'...

Reusing numbers

[popeydotcom]

We recently moved house and connected to NTL for telephone and cable modem. They gave us a number and I asked for it to be ex-directory (so it doesn't show up in public directories and thus should reduce the chances we get spam calls). Within a week or two we were getting fax calls from someone at all hours of the day and night. Not nice for Clare when I'm away from home, waking her up in the middle of the night (we don't have a fax machine). Problem is they always seemed to block their number, so dialling 1472 to get the CLI number didn't work. However *once* it did. We got the number and searched for it on the internet. I found out the company name and got their website from google. I then figured out their email naming convention and send an email to every employee in the company telling them to stop.

They stopped.

The problem was that our number was reused. It had been someone elses fax number 6 months ago. The phone company said they could change our number if we wanted, but we'd just get another recycled number.

The dimwit company with the fax machine hadn't purged their marketing database at all.

In the UK we have an opt-out system also, called the 'Telephone Preference Service'. There's also an associated organisation called the 'Mail Preference Service' to reduce spam through the letter box. Since we registered we haven't had any spam calls and little or no mail either.

The obvious solution...

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

We form vigilante groups of 10 or so, for every major city in the country. We arm them with flechette round shotguns, incendiary grenades and train them for a few weeks. We have the various legislatures authorize law enforcement to investigate spamming, and inform the vigilantes of any known telemarketer lair.

We send in the troops.

Either that, or we pull a Sigourney Weaver... "We go back to the mothership, and nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Re:Telemarketer blocking devices

[interiot]

Some usenet threads discussing use of the SIT Tone to attempt to trick computerized calling systems:

• Do Zappers really work with telemarketers? (15 posts)
• Telezapper easy to defeat? (14 posts)

There are many more. I'm just trying to give an alternate perspective because IMHO, local news places tend to be more interested in sensationalized exposés than in subtle details.

Anyway, you can just add that sit.wav to the start of your answering machine message for free, so it doesn't hurt to see for yourself.

Telezapper

[mrsam]

I've heard commercials on TV lately advertising products that you can put between the jack and the phone that actually block telemarketers. Does anyone have any experience with these devices? DO they work? Which is the best one to get?

There are several brand names these gizmos are sold under, the most common one is called a "Telezapper". The way they work is that every time you pick up the phone the device sends out that three-note high-pitched tone you sometimes hear when you misdial and reach an invalid number, or you get an "all circuits are busy" recording.

It's called a SIT tone - "Special Information Tone" - and is used by the phone company to indicate that the dialed number cannot be reached for some reason. It's actually not used in most places since that kind of information is now transmitted out-of-band with the voice call, but is used for compatibility reasons in case the call originates from some ancient phone switch in Antarctica which does not receive out-of-band signalling, and listens to the voice path to figure out what happened to the phone call.

The idea behind the telezapper is that many telemarketing calls are robo-dialed, and the telemarketer is put on the line only after you pick up the phone and answer (which is why many times you get a short delay after you say hello, before some sleazebag starts yammering into your ear trying to peddle some junk). If the telemarketers' dialer detects that the call didn't go through, it never even goes to a human. The idea is that if the robodialer hears a SIT it will assume that the phone number is invalid, and the phone number will be automatically removed from the telemarketer's phone list.

In any case, that's how it's supposed to work in theory. I wouldn't know, since I'm in NY and I don't get phonespam no mo'. :-) However I do know this: if you use that device you may experience occasional problems receiving calls from pay-phones. Many privately-owned payphones (you know, mostly the weird looking ones owned by some private phone operator that charges $5 per minute) are not properly provisioned to process out-of-band call signaling, and the circuitry in the payphone listens to the voice line in order to figure out what happened to the dialed call (busy, ringing, no answer, human speech, etc...) If the payphone hears a SIT it will disconnect the line even though the call will actually go through.

Re:Simple solution

[glitch!]

Get rid of the land line. Cell phones are cheaper and easier. Telemarketers don't have cell phone numbers.

That's an excellent point. I carry my cell phone everywhere, and everyone I know has the number. (I guess "they" can track me, now...) Recently I have stopped answering my home phone, and let my 2-year old answer it instead. She loves it! "Hewwwwooo?" babble babble babble. I figure that if she is still talking after a minute or so, it is someone in the family, and I can take over. Otherwise, who cares? :-)

Re:101 Way to Waste Their Time

[Kintanon]

As a former telemarketer I can tell you that the highlight of my night was usually when someone did something like the above poster described. Anything witty, funny, or interesting was a great break from the normal routine of calls. And we get paid pretty reasonably in addition to our comission. So don't feel about about making our night more interesting.

Kintanon
P.S. My favorite phone call is still the one where I called up and asked for some girl, and the guy who answered the phone responds with, 'She's busy sucking my dick right now.'

How to deal with telemarketers!

[DiveX]

Don't just make some causal 'place me on your do-not-call list' statement and hang up...mkae them follow through. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 has multiple requirements that would interest readers.
1. The use of prerecorded ads is illegal under this act (with the exception of emergency calls [i.e. evacuation notices]).
2. Upon request, they *must* send you a written copy of their DNR policy.
3. They must train their people in the use of the DNR policy and the implementation of it. e.g. If you ask for a written copy of the policy and they say one does not exist or they know nothing about it, then that can be construed as 2 violations of this federal law.

The actual numbers for those interested in reading up on this is 'Title 47 USC Section 227' and 47 CFR 64.1200.

The great thing about this law, unlike most anti-spam bills, is that it allows private right of action against the telemarketer. That's right, if they violate these rules, you can take them to small claims court. If you tell them to not call you again and they do so again within the next 10 years, that is another $500 violation. If you can demonstrate that they willfully violated this act (i.e. called you several time or used a clearly illegal prerecorded message), then you can ask for triple damages! Other things to remember, there is NO grace period for adding your name to the list. Even if they say it will 'take 8-10 days to completely remove the number' and call again the next day, that is a violation of the federal law.

The FTC is finally working on creating a national DNR list as directed by Congress when the TCPA was passed.

Do not just hang up or ignore these people. Know your rights and exercise them. Keep a log of the calls and get names and numbers. If they call once more it probably isn't worth it, but if they call more than that, then you have case history and the law to ack you up and can easily get a judgement (although collecting is always a different story). One story I remember from my research is a company in NJ was making calls for GM in Ohio. The guy went to court and got a judgement, but the firm in NJ said they wouldn't pay since they were in different states. The guy found that Ohio has a law stating that sompanies that do not pay legal judgements cannot conduct business in the state. The guy wrote the president of GM and said if they ever wanted to sell cars in that state to pay up...a check was sent less than 5 days later.

Many states have their own list, however I am not aware if any of the states allow for private action. Any legal action usually must be done by the state. Get on your state's list. It will help aid you if you persue action under the TCPA.

Here are some links for those interested in reading up:

http://consumer.net/telemarketing/tcpainfo.asp

http://www.private-citizen.com/ (private group dedicated to ant-telemarketing intrusions)

http://www.epic.org/privacy/telemarketing/

http://www.dianamey.com/ (story of one woman's fight against the system..to date she has collected over $30,000 since 1999 including $10,000 from Discover Card.