Slashdot Mirror
Telemarketers Plan Counterattack
Chris Hoofnagle writes "CNN reports that companies who heavily use telemarketing are planning to counterattack consumers with a barrage of spam and junk mail in October, when the new do-not-call registry goes into effect. Slashdotters should be aware that, as well as anti-spam email software, there are tools to avoid junk snail-mail, such as Junkbusters' free Declare, Private Citizen's excellent service and the Postal Service's Prohibitory Order service, which is described at the EPIC privacy page."
Those sleazebags will simply move to Canada, where there is already an overabundance of call centers and phone scammers.
because this will vastly improve the popularity of their products, putting them in the company of Nigerian scams and penis enlargement systems. Very popular indeed.
It's a lot harder to have a throw-away phone number than an email address. Thank you Hotmail!
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
I love it, the article has a popunder : )
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Stop buying stuff from the companies that do this. Bottom line. Spam and telemarketing works because of idiots. No one will pay cold callers who can't sell 1 out of 1000 sales. Put an end to the insanity, slashdot.
They want to play dirty??
They better have some heavy duty security in place. And they better have armed escorts to and from the parking lots. Someone is going to get a belly full someday very soon and they will go looking for a pound of flesh..
The odds are against them because they so viscously and relentlessly hound and harrass such large numbers of people so endlessly.
Sooner or later, the numbers say that a certain percentage of their victims will snap..
And you know what? I won't shed a single tear for one of them. Not one....
Here's the relevant section of the page from EPIC. I only included one link, the one to the most important form.
=== snip ===
Stopping Junk Mail with Post Office Prohibitory Orders
Individuals may obtain a prohibitory order to stop junk mail from being sent to a residence. This order can be obtained through a law that prohibits the mailing of advertising materials "which the addressee in his sole discretion believes to be erotically arousing or sexually provocative." Practically, this means that individuals can obtain a prohibitory order against any junk mail sender.
Individuals wishing to obtain a prohibitory order should visit their local post office for "Form 1500" or click on the link provided below.
The Attorney General's office no longer sues under this statute to obtain damages. However, individuals should still obtain prohibitory orders against junk mailers. By doing so, marketers who engage in saturation mailings (heavily-discounted mailings delivered to every residence in the area that are usually addressed with "Postal Customer" or "Resident") must adjust their address lists so that the materials are no longer sent to the address with the prohibitory order. This results in higher costs to junk mailers.
* Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order (Form 1500), United States Postal Inspection Service.
* 39 U.S.C. Sect. 3008, Prohibition of pandering advertisements.
* Rowan v. U.S. Post Office, 397 U.S. 728 (1970). "In today's complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail...Today's merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman's mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive."
* Unsolicited Sexually Oriented Advertising, United States Postal Inspection Service.
* Stop Unsolicited Sexually Oriented Advertising in Your Mail, United State Postal Inspection Service.
* Postal Bulletin PB 21977, United State Postal Inspection Service, July 30, 1998. "The prohibitory order. This order aids in protecting customers from receiving pandering advertisements through the mail. An addressee may obtain a prohibitory order against the mailer of an advertisement that the addressee determines, in his or her sole discretion, to be offering matter for sale that is erotically arousing or sexually provocative, as defined in title 39, United States Code, 3008. Postmasters may not refuse to accept a Form 1500 because the advertisement in question does not appear to be sexually oriented. Only the addressee may make that determination. The order prohibits the mailer from sending any further mail to the applicant (and his or her eligible minor children included in the application), effective on the 30th calendar day after the mailer receives the order."
* U.S. Laws on Direct Mail, Junkbusters.
=== snip ===
"We'll be giving the dog what the dog wants to eat," James F. Lyons, president of direct-marketing consultancy Optima Direct told the paper.
I usually flush shit down the toilet, not feed it to my dog. What goes around, comes around. I predict there will be a backlash against the sleaziest of these direct marketing firms and the slime that hire them. I already refuse to deal with companies that make me play touch-tone tag on their badly designed voice systems.
"telemarketing are planning to counterattack consumers with a barrage of spam and junk mail in October"
That's not what the story says. Sheesh, don't the submitters even read the articles? This story isn't about counterattacking anyone.
Here's a quote that summarizes the story: ''"We plan to shift into other communication mediums, and rely more heavily on traditional TV advertising and e-mail marketing," Allstate acting Chief Marketing Officer Todd DeYoung told the paper.''
In other words, they will stop using telemarketing and shift over to snail mail and email. Will that email be spam? Maybe, maybe not, but a spam from Allstate is a heck of a lot better than a phone call from Allstate every time I sit down to a meal.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
We all hate this shit, but going off at the Telemarketers and Spammers doesn't work - they've proven time and again that they have no respect for the "consumer".
Better is a) Don't buy the stuff, and b) Lodge formal complaints with the CEO of the company's using their services. Most of the top-dogs have little idea their marketing departments are doing this shit so let them know, and let them know you don't like it and won't buy their stuff as long as they do it.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Another slashdotter said it best:
"The best way to avoid spam is to never give out your e-mail address to anyone."
It's good advice. I've been using that method ever since I read that, and it's working beautifully.
Well, ok. First we have RIAA going all out sueing people left and right. Then we have SCO going all out crazy on the OSS and Linux community. Now we have the infamous telemarketing companies "counterattacking" their customers. Next up, grocery stores throwing tomatoes at shoppers.
Businesses are supposed to provide products and services, not shove them down our throats. It is our choice what we buy anyway, isn't it?
Question everything.
"companies who heavily use telemarketing are planning to counterattack consumers with a barrage of spam and junk mail"
Not a problem, as I'm reasonably certain that such tactics will lead them to the promised land of lawsuits, Chapter 11, and finally, Cellblock 6A, which houses Bubba's Fudge-Packing Factory. Spam on dear telemarketers. Spam your way to an 8x10 cell where you can push your wares on a 300lbs man who hasn't seen a woman in 15 years.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I can understand the logic behind a company who's business model relies on calling customers switching to spam and direct mail when the DNC registry is implemented but why can they not see that the reason it is being put in place is because of them and if they persist they will merely succeed in getting do not spam and do not mail lists created.
If your business model requires hassling your customers then when they prevent you doing it via the phone it's time to change business models not the method you use to hassle.
It's self defeating and why business's think that customers want you to cold-contact them I do not know. Find a market, advertise on mass media or in media that your customers read and then sell to them. Don't bother everyone else with your crap.
I am a bomb technician, if you see me running - try to keep up.
google a sit tone. sit.wav or sit.mp3
It's that nasty sounding tri-tone that you get when you call a phone number that's been disconnected.
Go to wally world and buy a $10 answering machine and a $10 caller ID.
Hit -record- on the answering machine.
Play the SIT tone into the microphone at a LOUD level, TWO TIMES in a row.
Then wait two seconds and say,
"I'm sorry, the number you called is not taking calls right now, please call back later." and repeat the SIT tone two more times loudly.
Set the answering machine to announce only, answer on 4th ring and don't let it record messages.
When the phone rings, look at the caller ID.
If it's not someone you KNOW or it says, "out of area" or "name unavailable" let the machine take care of it for you.
They have a computer that dials and listens for human voices. That's why you get silence when you answer it. When it hears you say "hello" it knows there is a living human there and it switches you to a semi-human operator so they can harrass you for 10 minutes.
The dialing computer hears the SIT tone and it asusmes that it has dialed a phone number that has been disconnected. You number is removed from the dialing databank and won't be tried again until the next billing cycle, they assume that you may have had your phone turned off for nonpayment and maybe get it back on later.
I swear to you this works. Just do it for ONE WEEK and this shit will almost totally stop.
And they DO sell/trade/share/rent those number banks with other companies. So after a few months the calls will all but totally vanish.
TRUST ME, IT WORKS!!
Personally, I don't care much about snail-mail spam. I figure if they're paying for it, the more the merrier. Gives me the chance to use that big, shiny dumpster right by the mailbox.
Telemarketers and spammers alike don't deserve respect.
If you get mail, try to always reply... on their dime. E.g. when they have business reply stuff.
Otherwise, if there is a return address mark "dead" on the mail and send it back.
If you're getting calls always try to find out things about the caller. Ask where they go to school [most are students]. Ask what political party they voted for, etc.
The bottom line is instead of trying to run and hide from them why not have fun instead? Answer the phone, just don't give them useful information. Lie through your teeth while learning things about them.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It appears that consumers are getting overexcited by the hype, and not paying any attention to the details regarding the national DO Not Call list. What it boils down to is that there is no infrastructure in place to deal with any complaints. And there will be complaints. When you sign up for a credit card, or subscribe to a magazine, you become a customer of that particular company, giving them the right to call you. You also give that company the right to share your information with their "affiliates". On October 1st, when everyone and their brother is calling the FTC's as yet non-existent call center to file their complaints, they will discover that they have no legitimate complaint. For the few people who actively send the required opt-out letters to their credit card companies telling them that they do not wish to have their information shared with the "affiliate" companies, when they call to make a legitimate complaint, what are the chances that they will get the required information to make a complaint. According to the National DNC website, "You must provide either the NAME or the PHONE NUMBER of the COMPANY that called you, as well as the DATE OF THE CALL and YOUR PHONE NUMBER. I don't think that there are many telemarketing companies out there that will be very forthcoming with their Name or Phone Number for angry victims, especially when each violation will cost them $11,000. And please note that the FTC does not yet have any specifics on how to file a complaint, or who to file it with. Let's face it; 46 states have had do not call lists for years, and it hasn't stopped the telemarketers yet.
(offtopic) Additionally, the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that this is the best idea that the government ever had for creating a database of names and numbers and email addresses. Peole are entering their data for the FTC as fast as they possibly can. And with nothing to show for it in the end.(/offtopic)
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
.. it will save me having to buy all those equally useless newspapers to start the fire with in the cold winters evenings.
Don't think so? I'll show you the receipt for the money I send to the phone company to rent the number. As such, calling me to sell me something is nothing short of trespassing--it is using my property without my permission.
Howizzit telemarketers don't grasp this concept? Howizzit the lawmakers fail to? Whyizzit we have to finely craft laws such as the don't-call-list to leave loopholes so I still have to hang up on the statetroopers whoopee fund. It is so demonstrably clear that my phone number is mine and using it is not free speech. Leaving the loophole is like leaving a loophole that says it is okay for the local repugnican party to put "elect tusch" signs in my yard.
And same argument goes for my email address. It's mine, I pay good money to my cable company to have it.
Oddly, snail mail doesn't trespass in the same way. The marketer has to pay to for their soon-to-be-trash to be brought to my house. Then again, I do have to pay to have it hauled away.
To reduce crime, make fewer things against the law.
Yes, we need a list that includes do not mail, do not e-mail, do not phone and do not send carrier pigeons. This list shall be known as that STFU List.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I think the front of the Wall Steet Journal today had a graphic on the right side of the front page showing the amount of money spent by industries on telemarketing.
If I remember correctly, the bar graphs summed up to something around $10 billion (yes, $10,000,000,000) dollars anually.
So, if $10 billion is being spent on telemarketing, how much are people buying to make that expenditure worth while?
Somewhere, oh somewhere, there are those idiots spending ATLEAST $10 fucking-billion dollars a year to keep these dickheads calling us at dinnertime!
<ackbar>It's a trap!</ackbar>
I got a call from a company many days in a row, and it played the nice DTMF tones that cause the phone companies computer to ignore your switch hook, so when you hang up, it doesn't recognize that you have done so. after about 3 days in a row of this, I stayed on the line until I got to a real live person. I asked that I be taken off their list, and was told it would be done, but could take a few days. I Politely asked for the companies name, phone number and address, which was given to me. (it is a violation of federal law not to). I then called the phone company and after getting ahold of a person there with some real power, (this is the hardest part) explained that company A was twiddling with their computers using aforementioned DTMF tones. This is a violation of almost all phone companies TOS. The engineer type said he would look into it.
The next day, I did not receive a phone call from company A, so I decided to call them, and darn it, there phones had been disconnected.
True story, it really works. If you are persistent, you can get their phones turned off.
In the wild there are no dumb lions tigers or bears. Only humanity subsidizes the continued existence of the stupid.
The problem is that there are idiots on both sides of the transaction. P.T. Barnum would be so proud. If said idiot believes he can get rich quick by hiring a spammer to send out 100 million emails for $100 on his behalf, it doesn't matter if there is 0 response. The spams have already gone out, and even if he doesn't try again, there are thousands of other idiots willing to take his place.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A note about one nasty little loophole in this, though: if you ask them to "remove my number from the database" then they have to remove it, but there's no time limit on how soon they can put it in (they could take it out and put it right back in). If you ask to be put on the "do-not-call list," however, then they are in for a world of hurt. Just get the telemarketing company name and ideally the telemarketer's name as well, and send an email to the FTC. They then are fined $11,000 (reduce your tax burden, eh?).
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
The telezapper just uses ONE of the three tones.
They telemarketers got wise to this and they now only recognize the tri-tone as being legit.
The single tone the telezapper puts out is no longer useable.
A REAL SIT tone still gets the job done..
Play the SIT tone into the microphone at a LOUD level, TWO TIMES in a row.
You only need to play it once. Loud is good though. Call it from a friend's house to see how it sounds.
Then wait two seconds and say,
"I'm sorry, the number you called is not taking calls right now, please call back later." and repeat the SIT tone two more times loudly.
Set the answering machine to announce only, answer on 4th ring and don't let it record messages.
Completely unnecessary. When the SIT tone is done, record a normal greeting. Set the machine to go ahead and record messages. More SIT tones at the end of your message are annoying and will not help you. Remember that there will be people calling that you actually want to talk to, and you don't want to scare them away.
A telemarketer's computer will detect the SIT tone (the first time) and remove the number from their list, as you said. Or, a live telemarketer will hear the SIT tone and immediately hang up, thinking the number is disconnected - the faster they hang up, the faster they can move on to the next call, and they get paid commission. Your friends/family/etc. will probably stop to listen to your message, which sounds like a normal answering machine, and they'll just leave a message.
When you ARE home, answer the phone normally; don't use the answering machine. If a telemarketer calls, simply tell them: "Please add this number to your Do Not Call list." Notice the difference between "add this number" and "remove this number". The SIT tone on the answering machine when you're not home will have the same effect as asking for your number to be removed - it's better than nothing, but you'll always wind up on some other list. Do Not Call lists are taken VERY seriously.
They have a computer that dials and listens for human voices. That's why you get silence when you answer it. When it hears you say "hello" it knows there is a living human there and it switches you to a semi-human operator so they can harrass you for 10 minutes.
Wrong. The reason you get silence is, their predictive dialing system got a little too aggressive.
Basically what happens is, say you've got 500 employees logged in, all on the phone. A phone call takes X seconds on average. It takes an average of Y seconds to dial a phone number, wait for it to connect, and a hapless victim to answer. Based on these statistics, there should be an employee finished with his/her current call and ready to take a new one in Z seconds (Z is X minus how long ago they started their current call). Wait until Z=Y, and start dialing, even though all employees are still on other calls and nobody's available to talk to a victim. As soon as an employee becomes available, connect them to the number you just dialed. The problem is, since Z can fluctuate by quite a bit, you may have dialed too soon, so when Y seconds go by and the victim answers, no employees have finished with the calls they're already on yet, and the victim gets silence until someone becomes available to connect the call to.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If this was really true, it would have stopped already.
-- james
The people spoke amongst themselves and the City Council and it came to be that the zoo would no longer be free. We would have ticket counters and an admission fee. We knew the troublemakers would go somewhere else if they had to pay to get in, and if they were caught misbehaving, they would have to pay again if they wanted back in. It worked. We hated to lose our "free" zoo, but it had to be.
I hate to think of internet mail-server routing services no longer being free, but we may well get pushed into this because it may be less expensive to deal with a payment system than it is to deal with spam.
At least one advantage I can think off right off the bat with a payment system is that someone pays... that means someone is accountable for what got sent, and if fraud is involved, there is a direct monetary theft involved. A shopping mall can haul you into court over a shoplifted candy bar. So even if the payment is not much, it *is* a payment and incurs accountability.
It really bugs me to be forced into this train of thought, as I would much rather consider infrastructures to be public property. But, like the zoo, a pricing strategy may have advantages for controlling unruly pests.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I should also note that Allstate is Sears is the company that back in 1995 was sued by its own middle-level executives, because top-level management sent them to Scientologist "training" that said "cheat the customer", and they quit the training and were fired.
.
You can google for that one... but it's out there, and it was in the newspapers at the time. So if you buy Allstate, expect to be cheated.
But for me, what really caught my notice is that they think I'm a dog. Okay. But keep your spam away too.
- . - . -
I should also note, while I'm at it, that Allstate is by no means the only dishonest/evil insurance company. You have to be careful. For example: do not become a partner of Lloyds of London. Lloyds was discovering that all their asbestos insurance was a huge liability, so they suddenly opened their insurance to new "partners", who were relatively new multimillionaire Americans, and then switched the documentation so the asbestos liability went to them. When the Americans sued (there were about 8 of them), they were all mysteriously murdered within a year. The last I heard was that the heirs of one of them continued the suit, but the law offices of their lawyers, one of them in James City County, were all mysteriously burgled, and the documents stolen. So... umm... realize that Lloyds is owned by murderers before you do business with them. [That was from the Daily Press of Newport News, about 1996].
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Phone: *ring*
Cthulhu: Hello?
JF Lyons: Hi there, Mr. Khooloo, I calling you because I want to give you what you want to eat! Interested?
Cthulhu: Why yes, I am a bit peckish...
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
3. An anonymous death threat. Not directed at me personally, but still it was coming to the family phone number. He informed me that he was "sharpening the knives" among other things.
2. Some chick who wanted me to repair a wheelchair, because that was obviously what I do. (It's not.)
1. Some guy calling from Tokyo and wanted to know if I was interested in the stock market and trading. (I live in Sweden, btw.)
Uh huh.
It works?
Most telemarketers and outgoing call centers use what is known as a Progressive Dialer. Generally speaking, a Progressive Dialer uses ISDN. ISDN has this wonderful ability to have a "Data" channel, basically taking all of the information that would be considered "In band" (e.g., ringing, busy signal, SIT tones, etc) and placing it inside that data channel--so in theory, the ISDN 'channel' only hears voices...no dial tone, no busy signals, no SIT noise.
That ISDN line knows if your phone really is SIT'ed out, if it really is busy, or what the status of your line is, just by reading the information that your phone company's switch sends it.
I should also remind you that it's probably against your phone company's TOS to use SIT tones on your answering machine, however, YMMV.
This is just technical information, and I'm going from my limited experince as a Telephone Switch Operator for a campus that had a little under 3000 trunk lines. It may work for you, but, who knows...it may not.
I disable sigs...do you?
I had one lady hooked, asking questions about warranty, return procedures, etc. Then I would say "hold on, somebody at the door" and put the phone down for a few minutes, and come back for more questions.
Finally, after about 25 minutes of this, I asked a question the drone did not have a script for, and the supervisor came on the line. Asked her a few questions, finally got tired of it all, and said, "You know what? I changed my mind. I don't want it after all. Thanks, bye."
I did not receive another telemarketer call for over a month. (Usually got them once a day...)
And before you go on about, telemarketers are human too, I used to work as one, etc. Well, I'm human, wish to be left alone, and if polite requests don't work, then this is war. TFB.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
On the other hand, since I've signed up for the no-call list two years ago I haven't had a spam call since (only charity calls). The list works, but it takes several months from the time you sign up to the time you are legally allowed to start taking names because the directory of uncallable phone numbers is only published once every three months. Also, I think there is a 3 or 4 year time-limit on the list before you have to sign up for it again.
...and that's the way the cookie crumbles.
And I can understand why they're switching to spam and direct mail. They've convinced themselves that there are people who want to buy things, and you'd be suprised how easy it is to get people to buy from you, or at least listen to you. There are a lot of idiots out there. I quit because I couldn't stand to be part of that industry. (When I started I really, really needed the money, and I couldn't find another job that fit into my schedule.) Not only do you do something that could get you killed, but the management at these places treat the workers like slaves; scheduled bathroom breaks, no food or drinks or reading materials at the cubicles, tied to the phone for eight hours a day, denied promotions that would take you off of the phones, and forced to be as annoying as possible because there was always someone listening. The management in this industry are the ones to blame, most of the telemarketers there were college kids or single moms trying to make a buck and getting dicked around if they did well. The DNC list is the best thing to happen to this industry, but, like the scum they are, they're fighting the rights of people not to be swindled or bothered. When I was there they told us that the main office, which we give the address and phone number of, is built like a fortress, so don't try to go postal on them, it won't work.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
See, it does work.
I didn't want to talk to you anyway...