Telemarketers to Target Cell Phones

sik puppy writes "According to this article on msnbc, telemarketers may soon be targeting cell phones." The article discusses how some of these will be accidental, but others will be in response to things like the do-not-call registry.

Comments

Been getting SMS spam for years already

[hattig]

In the UK we've been getting SMS spam messages for years already.

Of course, the cost of sending these messages means that you don't get many, and they won't come with a 150KB attachment for no good reason.

Re:Been getting SMS spam for years already

[Teun]

A big difference between Europe and the US is that in Europe you don't pay (call minutes) for incoming calls or messages (as long as you are within your own country).

Ha!

[TheBeardIsRed]

(Pardon My referencing of the US code, i'm not a lawyer and thus don't know the proper way to cite things)

Title 47, Chapter 5, Subchapter II, Part I, Section 227, Article b, Item 1, Subitem B, Instance iii

It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States to make any call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party) using any automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice to any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call;

Thus anyone using an auto-dialer (i.e. 99% of telemarketers) are inviolation of the law and subject to a $500 fine in small claims court.

See these for more info:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/227.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/05/116238 &mode=thread&tid=126&tid=111&tid=99&tid=12 3
http://www.panix.com/~eck/telemarket.html