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National Do Not Call List Opens for Registrations
prockcore writes "The National Do Not Call Registry is up and running. Sign up so most telemarketers cannot call you starting October 1st. There are exemptions though, like for charities and political organizations." Note that many of the states which have opened their own registries will be sharing that data with the national list, so you may not have to re-register - check and see what your state is doing.
All I can say is Thank God! More than a simple annoyance in our home lives, the telemarketing industry is a severe drain on the resources of this country. Much like the bureaucracies of Europe (not to mention Canada) which are so widely criticized, the US telemarking industry provides a means of artificial employment for innumerable workers in this country, with people attempting to sell unwanted products in vain, going from job to job as telemarketing franchises are born and die, contributing nothing to the actual economic output of the country. Goodbye telemarketing, and good riddance...
They are supposed to be releasing a phone number to call in after a week (or few). I plan to make use of that myself, as the CT do not call list has served me and my wife quite well. (We only get called once a year from a local sheriff's office asking for money.) The online version no doubt alleviates a flood of call volume from people who aren't so worried about the e-mail address thing, so more power to them.
And as such, that's the exact reason I won't be registering with it at all.
Simply put, it's yet another database being compiled by the government, and to be for such a frivilous matter as telemarketers, I don't see the need.
Do like I do: when I telemarketer calls, put them on hold... and forget about them. Or goof on them, al la Ed Norton in Boiler Room.
+ G to tha Izzo, A to tha Tizee, Talking Giz-oat, Ya'll Bettah Feel Me... +
My concern regarding this list is how it may be used by the exempt entities. All of these political and non-profit organizations are free to interrupt my dinnertime at will. What's to keep them from harvesting this uber-list to augment their dialing pool? I may just wind up with more telemarketing calls after I jump on this registry than I ever did before. Granted they'll be "for a good cause" but I prefer to choose my own causes, thank you very much!
this doesn't affect market researchers calling you. Don't get me wrong i'm not complaining, but it would be great if we could somehow get them under the umbrella.
Could we also add ex-girlfriend's to the list?
http://use.perl.org
I recall that there are exemptions for certain types of research. For example, the BLS has phone surveys on employment research.
However, a blanket exclusion of "market research" would pretty much nullify the entire program since marketers would just make every call a "research call."
"Have you every wanted to make a million dollars with no effort?"
"Have you ever heard the magic three letters 'MLM'?"
Shocking!
This is probably a good thing from a certain point of view. If they had tried to restrict political calls, then the whole regulation might have been tossed out on 1st Amendment grounds. It certainly would have clouded the issue, and would have very like have been challenged.
I guess we're going to have to wait a few hours on this.
BTW, The e-mail address is so they can verify. You MUST respond to their e-mail within 72 hours or the registration is cancelled.
Next step, a national Do Not Email registry.
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
Here's a good idea. How about if the Fed takes your supplied email address and creates a "Do not SPAM list."
You're wrong about that.
The FCC (as opposed to the FTC) regulates calls made by the industries you list. The FCC recently voted to support the registry, so that loophole has been closed.
This CNN article mentions it.
And didn't Microsoft just prove the reliability of using something as impermanent as domain/e-mail to identify someone? Phone numbers are just as reliable. Seven months after getting a new phone number, we still get calls for the previous user--at least a quarter of the telemarketing calls are directed at them.
The government (from city up to federal) already knows things like a person's SSN and address. A home address is a bit more useful for aiming the mind control satellite than a Yahoo account! ;-)
If I'm already on the Missouri list and it's been nearly 100% successful, why would I need to be on the national list? Missouri isn't sharing it's data according to the site and I'm kind of glad because that would probably lead to "charities" from out of state calling me.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Everyone is talking about the exemptions. No-one is talking about the delay.
If you sign up before August 1st, telemarketers have to stop calling you in October. This suggests that telemarketers should/will use the list as a "call now" list during September. Similarly, if you sign up after Aug 1, they have three months to call you as many times as posible.
Yes there has to be some delay, but three months?
I'm not saying they will all do this, but I bet some will.
This is not a political statement. This is not legal advice. It's a frick'n Slasdot post. However: I'm Running For
Think about this for a second, folks. You're helping the government compile a list that anyone but 'protected telemarketers' can call. The regular telemarketers have to grab the list, and weed the numbers out of their databases.
Now think about this. The government is supplying a list of telephone numbers. There exists 'protected telemarketers'. If you were a protected telemarketer, what would you do?
You got it. Download the list, and you've got yourself a database of active telephone nubmers to start calling. All for free. "Thanks for giving us your number, chump. Now me and my buddies can call all we want."
And what good will a db linking email to phone numbers be?
The gov't already knows how much you make, where you live, your employment record, and who you're related to. They have easy access to your school records and most likely know how intelligent you are. They know what car you drive, what charities you give to, and your run-ins with the law. And if they've ever suspected you of anything, then they know your cohorts, political beliefs, your keystrokes, and what you say on the phone. If they were ever worried about who belongs to a particular address, they already had tools to easily find out.
It's one more bit of information which is a little disturbing, but accounting for the breadth of knowledge they already have, an email address is insignificant. Especially when creating an anonymous, legal, throw-away address circumvents any linking.
I'm not really directing this at you, it's directed to the idiot moderators who thought your comment deserved modding up.
Offshore telemarketers and spammers from mining the do not call database? These people are scum anyways, and as long as they are not operating within the US, it seems to me that the US government has just handed them a bonafide list of valid phone and email addresses.
My rights don't need management.
Boy everyone likes to poke fun at the republicans.....well, they may not have had to do that if Clinton would have been taking care of Osama instead of playing with his cigars and Monica Lewinsky. Then again, if his daddy would have taken care of Saddam, we would not had to do it this time.
Then again if the Clinton administration hadn't been hampered by impeachment hearings over blowjobs, maybe they would've dealt with Osama bin Laden. Then again if Reagan hadn't increased covert operations in Afghanistan, the Taliban may not have come to power. Then again if whoever hadn't supported the Shah, then Islamism (NOT Islam) may not have gained such a foothold. Then again if WWI and WWII hadn't happened, then the US wouldn't be such a world power and Sept 11 wouldn't have happened. Then again if the Ottoman empire had truly embraced Westernization, perhaps Europe and by extension the US would be Islamic. Etc, etc, etc... 20/20 hindsight and shoulda-woulda-coulda count for diddly squat.
The truth still stands that the current administration has eroded our civil rights.
Acually, he has a point. When you use someones phone, or use there e-mail, you are invading their property with your e-mail/phone call. They pay for the service, and it is up to them how it should be used. You should not have to allow "anyone" to send you anything into your home BECAUSE you pay for a service. You SHOULD have the right, the liberty, to define what does and does not enter your home. When you watch television you are allowing whatever those people want to come into your home, and it is up to you to decide whether you want to turn it off or not.
When you have a phone you are not requesting the information that people send to you, you are using it as a communications device.
When a company starts sending unsolicited material, in volume, that might be construed as an invasion of property, a denial of service against your phone so to speak.
YOU PAY FOR THE PHONE, you should have the RIGHT to say "i dont want MY phone to be used this way"
because it is YOUR phone, YOUR service.
if someone signed up for a "i dont want to be part of a gallop poll" list then yes by god that person shouldnt have the gallop poll ringing their house.
it is not freedom of speech to FORCE someone to listen to, or receive content. It is freedom of speech to ALLOW someone to say there peice, but it is NOT freedom of speech to make someone listen to it.
That is a captive audience, and thats what telemarkters, TV, and Spammers, all want.
IT IS NOT THE RIGHT of SPAMMERS, TV, TELEMARKTERS to have a captive audience, or even a "partially captive audience" (ie forcing you to at least allow them to try to talk to you). They can send there message as much as they wwant, but they should not necessarilly be allowed to do it using private infrastructure (the phone to your house).
The problem is, TV, spammers, etc, are all trying to get into the mode where it is required you listen to someone elses "free speech" or "corporate speech" so that they can try to sell you products. But it is stupid because once you receive the information you paid for, you should be able to block, stop, or edit it for how YOU want to view it.
but that is becoming illegal, alreayd is illegal in some venues.
This is really a great victory for privacy advocates because it says people can stop others from using their property, and their infrastructure to annoy them without the ability to stop them.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion