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

Who pays me...

[drpickett]

...for the squandering of my incoming minutes?

Simple remedy...

[91degrees]

Ban telemartketing unless people explicitely opt-in.

Re:This always happens with regulation.

[mr.capaneus]

What are telemarketers contributing to society? Why do we need to keep them employed? It is an unfortunate side-effect of our screwey economic system that everyone must be employed somewhere even if they are not doing anything productive.

Phone companies could make a killing

[rhombic]

1) Put into their terms of service that the user agrees to use the phone company as an agent for their $500 Title 47 small claims court actions against telemarketers, giving the phone company a 50% cut of any awarded damages

2) Give users a special dial code to call immediately after receiving a telemarketing call, like you can use *57 for harassing calls

3) Deliver the telemarketing companies a weekly invoice for their calls to cell phones

4) No, this isn't the stupid joke you thought it was, move along.

Re:I say "Lawsuit."

[Marc2k]

Because there's no marginal loss in terms of services. Paying by the minute is a vastly different concept, and they are undeniably wasting your resources. The only loss you incur picking up a plain old telephone and answering is the opportunity cost of having the phone line open when waiting for a call, or being on the phone yourself, which is arguably zero, as you can hang up at any time. With a cell phone, if I answer, hear it's a telemarketer, and immediately hang up, I'm officially losing 1 minute of airtime. In that model, the time lost is much more tangible financially.

The junk fax link

[Paisley Phrog]

Telemarketers on cell phones bear a lot in common with junk mail faxes, which are illegal. Junkfax.org explains all about that, and why you should be hearing a cash register every time you get an ad for a cheap tropical cruise!

Telemarketer cell phone calls are similar to unsolicited telemarketer faxes in that the recipient of the ad is required to pay to get the message in front of them. It doesn't matter if it's toner and paper or minutes, the cost is there.

Re:Been getting SMS spam for years already

[ibennetch]

Interesting enough, you can send messages to anyone for free from my phone company's website, as long as their phone is through the company.

I've seen this with a lot of providers here in the US -- most of them have a way to send messages via a web interface. I think you can even send them through an email gateway in most cases (2025551234@mobile.provider.com or something). Not the same as getting your normal email through your phone, this is a seperate email gateway. At least, that's what I've been told.

Why is this an issue?

[CAIMLAS]

IIRC, cellular numbars are relegated to seperate 'precincts'. At least around here, you can tell which numbers are cell numbers and which are landlines by the second set of 3 numbers: 250, 251, 257, etc. for cell phones, 252, 253 for land lines. This might simply be due to the fact that seperate companies have control of these numbers, though.

What I wonder is how companies get cell phone numbers in the first place, to 'accidentially' call. Cell phones are all unlisted for a reason. This means they were either sold the numbers by the cell company, or they're randomly calling folks.

Going through numbers in random/sequential order is illigal, IIRC. It's considered right up there with prank phone calls and the like, which (again, IIRC) you can be prosecuted for if found out. The problem is, you can rarely find out precisely who called you. Phone networks don't exactly have whois. That, and the only realistic way to do something like this is a class-action suit. That involves a lot of dirt digging by many people - something that isn't practical in the least.