Slashdot Mirror
Cell Phone Directory Coming Soon
applemasker writes "According to this story on Yahoo News via the L.A. Times, an upcoming cell phone directory which supposedly includes 75% of all cell users is in the works. Some people are already receiving cell phone spam and telemarketing calls. Worse yet, unless you opt-out at the beginning of your contract, some carriers such as T-Mobile can gladly hand over your info (though the article says that T-Mobile is changing the contract now). Some good news though, Verizon Wireless has said that it will not share its customer lists. Still, maybe it's time to submit your cell number to the Do Not Call List if you haven't done so already." We had a related story last year.
Maybe I'm naieve, but I personally think this would be a good idea. Telemarketers are irriting, no question, but worse still is losing a phone number and being unable to find it. I don't have to refer to the phone-book too often for landlines, but every time I do, it saves me mucho effort or results in me being able to contact someone I otherwise would not be able to.
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
funny- when I first signed up for the Federal DNC list, it asked me to provide up to 5 phone numbers. Didn't anybody else enter their cell numbers at that point?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Right, and I'm sure you know just how well the "anti-junk fax laws" work. Or maybe you don't have one of them fax machines.
"Wireless carriers say they doubt there will be widespread abuse. They point out that most mobile phones come equipped with caller ID, distinctive ring tones, call blocking and other tools to manage unwanted calls. And several carriers say they have made refunds to subscribers who have received unwanted calls. "
What they fail to understand is that, atleast with my carrier (Sprint), text messages pop up all the time. I have no options to block text messages from certain users, or only allow messages from those in my phone book. I think the biggest area won't be the unwanted calls, but rather the unwanted text messages that cost about as much as it does to send spam messages.
By far.. Worst idea EVER!
Hmmm.
Until recently, when customers switched carriers, their numbers changed as well, so marketers were reluctant to invest much in compiling databases.
For once I thought that something good was being done for the consumer...my mistake.
As for picture phones, there are a ton of them for verizon, infact i know of one that is great and by LG.... but it begs the question.... who really needs their phone to take pictures... PDA replacement i can see, ability to be used as a modem yes... but PICTURES?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Verizon already phone spams their own customers.
About a month ago, I got one of those annoying automated calls offering me "great new services" through Verizon. The recording said "Push 1 for more information".
So, I pushed '1' and waded went through several levels of systems until I could talk to a human. I asked him to set all my privacy preferences to prohibit any further calls or sharing of my personal information, and he was totally lost at how to proceed. He acted as if this was an unprecedented request.. "I don't have any idea how I could do that. We don't have any settings for that in the user accounts."
After spending 30 minutes on the phone with this guy, I was pissed to have wasted so much time and just wanted to hang up. But he agreed to submit some paper form that was supposed to ensure this did not happen again.. He did not inspire a lot of confidence, but I haven't gotten another call.. yet.
I still use the same old line that I used before the DNC list "I do not ever, ever respond in any way to unsolisited telephone calls of any type. Please take me off your list and I hope that you have a nice day ".
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
Friggin' slashdot.
Let's look at the quote again:
Worse yet, unless you opt-out at the beginning of your contract, some carriers such as T-Mobile CAN gladly hand over your info
No, it does not sound like they are selling personal info. It sounds like the boiler-plate contract that their lawyers created to be as all-encompassing as possible grants them the right to do that (along with probably the right to eat your children and harvest your organs). That is not at all the same thing as actually acting upon those rights. This particular clause in the contract just came under scrutiny, and the first thing they did was say "don't worry, we'll fix it."
Look, I agree that it's important to review these contracts, and to reign them in to prevent abuse. But there's this absurd mentality that all big corporations are like a ship full of Borg, bearing down on you, bent on destruction. There are good companies, and there are bad companies, but pretty much every large company has lawyers, else they would have been sued back to being a small company over something ridiculous (think googol-family suing Google). Those lawyers write the contracts, and they try to write them so that there's no chance their company can ever be held liable for anything bad at all. That doesn't mean the company is evil and intends to actually do all the things that it's allowed to.
As soon as you have credible reports of T-Mobile selling personal information, then feel free to start yelling about it. But right now the only facts that we have are that their contract would have allowed them to do that, and that as soon as this was pointed out, they said they're changing it.