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Do-Not-Call List Could Be Opened For Phone Spam
Wick_7654 submits a link to this story at the Chicago Sun-Times, which begins "The agency overseeing the national Do Not Call Registry is considering opening a loophole to allow companies to deliver 'pre-recorded message telemarketing.' The effort is being organized by Allen Hile of the FTC's division of marketing practice. Be sure to let the FTC know how you feel about it." The proposed change specifies that recorded calls would be allowed only when an "established business relationship" exists, but provisions like that tend to be stretched to absurdity.
Aren't companies allowed to make calls already if they have a "pre-established business relationship" with you? Has this changed or is the summary missing something?
and the fact that telemarketers have been drooling at the prospect of a list that they can get for free. Notch one up for the telemarketers lobbest and one down for the public.
This admin seems determined to allow large businesses to do whatever. The can spam act is a total joke just like what will happen to the federal do-not-call list
.One of the interesting things about it is that it allows large companies to do as they see fit. MSN (and I believe Yahoo and AOL amongst others) to this day , still sell an address list, bandwidth, and ips to spammers. In particular, MSN works with companies such as SBC and Qwest and will "borrow" home users IP's for temp useage. Of course, the users are not currently using them, so MSN will allow spammers to appear to be the end-user. So many people here think that spam is originating from China, when in reality, it does not. It is simply given the appearence of such. Of course, the government made sure that can spam did not injure that practise.
Now, they are slipping in a backdoor for the no-call list. If you really want to have this work, then you should try to get your state to pass the same law as Colorado has. Colorado started it and it seems to work well.
How about this? Mr. Geek develops a telephone with a database of telephone numbers that he wants to accept. Any number that is not on that list is blocked. Basically, it opens and closes the line, so the marketer won't keep the line busy. This should work with Caller ID.
well this reminded me of the one simpsons episode with Homer's phone spamming machine. But in all seriousness, do people really think by overriding the whole not calling list really will increase their sales. This list says that the people will not purchase their stupid crap no matter how much they call so dont even bother; and yet they still think that by overriding the list that they will increase their sales. If they actually do increase sales with this, please give me the list of who bought the crap and i will go over to each of their houses and beat every one of them, then stick their face in whatever they bought, just like an untrained dog learning to be potty trained, and say, "no...". If i get a spam phone call, i will track their house down and their house will accidently light on fire. So is it really worth it to them? i dont think so...
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
But then, I don't waste my time with telemarketers either. Here's how the average telemarketing call to my house goes:
Me: Hello?
TM: Hello, can I speak with [horrible attempt to pronounce my name]--"
click!
Nothing personal, but I don't let them get the first sentence out. And I've noticed that I get much fewer calls than before. I suspect a refusal to listen gets noted somewhere in some database and eventually you get fewer calls as a result. Try it. Unless it involves bombing a third-world nation somewhere, you probably shouldn't rely on a government run by George W. Bush to get something like this done right.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Military recruiters are the worst. I had been expecting a phone call from a company where I was ordering something. A message was left on my answering machine around that time, asking to speak to me and leaving an 800 number, but not saying who was calling. Foolishly thinking this could possibly be a call regarding the order (from a mom&pop operation), I returned the phone call. The phone was answered by a recruiter, US Army. Miffed (they'd called recently already and I'd asked to be taken off their list), I hung up without so much as a hello. Not surprisingly, I was greeted with a return call, asking if I'd just called and hung up. I informed him that his call was unwelcome. He said it was rude to call someone and immediately hang up. I informed him that it was even more rude to leave a phone message on my machine without identifying oneself, especially since the call was unwanted.
Finally, I asked him to take me off his list and never call again. He replied that SINCE I HAD CONTACTED HIM, he could not remove me. Knowing the conversation never goes anywhere and such people have rarely been considerate of my suggestions to end the conversation, I took the initiative to hang up myself. I expect they'll call again in a few months, and the whole circus parade can begin anew. Since they are always so eager to stay on the line, perhaps I'll buy a karaoke machine for the occasion.
-- I prefer the term "karma escort."
This provision needs to be there...otherwise, the "stretching" could go the other way to prevent Blockbuster from calling me and reminding me that Halo 2 is overdue. That's valid, and they should be allowed to do that even through we're on do-not-call. If it's not, someone will find a way to abuse it so that no commercial entity can call them legally...heh, easy way to get back at credit collectors: sue them under do-not-call and give them the money you win. This seems to me like the greater evil.
I'm not sure how "established business relationship" can be abused, since a former relationship doesn't exist anymore and shouldn't be allowed to justify calling me now. Of course, we'll have to see how the law is worded....
20khz is way too high for a phone, bandwith for phone speach is about 400hz to 3khz I think. Also, 20kHz is way too high for a lot of people to hear. Better to blast with a 1kHz tone, that is where the ear is more sensitive. But then again, better not to torture the poor telemarketing monkey at the tnd of the phone with permament tinitus. I want to punch the people that set-up and run these things though.
In fact, I got a call a couple of days ago from Florida (I am in Scotland) trying to sell me hollidays. I told the person it was illegal here and I was on the UK list, se said it was legal in the USA, I told her I WASNT in the USA... Anyway, i got some address and company name, but I bet neither are true... how does one get these people back? I hate them with a vengence.
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More to the point, the telephone is a resource for which we all shell out good money, and I don't recall ever seeing anything in my contract with the phone company that says I authorize its use for telemarketing purposes. The entire telemarketing industry (and I use the term loosely because they produce nothing) completely crosses the line, period, as a parasitic, unjustified, unprincipled misuse of the national communications system. It should be illegal for that reason alone, and frankly I don't care if you are a deserving charity, or Mother Theresa herself for that matter. It is MY GODDAMN PHONE ... get the hell off it unless I said you can use it.
... they'll eventually worm their way around it or just blatantly disregard it and write off the occasional fine as a cost of doing business. I don't think we're going to win this one.
... I see it's from some company I've never heard of so I ignore it. An automated telemarketing message was left, I forget what about. Whatever. So then a minute or so later, the phone rings again. Only now, it's blocked (private) but the same message is left. Obviously they were hoping that I might pick it up the second time thinking it would be someone important. That was when I started blocking private calls. *click*.
Congress outlawed junk faxes some years ago, and it worked for a while. However, my fax server was getting about a dozen a day (five days in Cancun for only $300! Free timeshare in Florida!) 'til I moved. Fortunately they haven't found me yet, but given that this activity is already illegal I don't expect telemarketers to be any more respectful of the law
My home network has a server that handles a lot of tasks, including email, faxing and caller ID services. I have the capability to simply hang up on any unrecognized incoming calls (if the call comes in blocked or private all the other side hears is a "click*.) If you're blocking your number I presume you're someone I don't care to hear from. *click*. If the FTC neuters the DoNotCall list in this way, I'll have to configure my system to ignore any calls not on the accepted list. I would allow emergency calls to go through with a touchtone bypass code, but that alone would stop automated telemarketing.
One day I'm sitting at home and the phone rings
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Good call! The FTC will be a profitmaking branch of the government, like the patent and trademark offices. They just have to change the law so that you need to buy a permit to break the (old) law. There's no law you couldn't do that with, right up to and including murder.
Of course it has been done before elsewhere (recall "indulgences", "letters of marque", "royal companies", and lots more variations) and it could have been done here any time. It was never a good idea before, but now somehow it is. When the government is populated with crooks and shysters, it gets hard to tell who's not one.
OK, how many people went to the link and filled it out? How much you want to bet that that link actually is tied to a telemarketer and you have now established a business relationship with them. They now have you name and information and can proceed to make calls at all hours of the day and night.
Having been on the do not call list since the begnining I can say that it has worked very well. Where I used to get a couple of calls a day I have recevied only a hand full of calls over the last year. For those that I could get a company name or phone number I have reported them. I received a call yesterday that seems to be the new method of annoying people. The phone number is blocked and it is a recording, this case offering free travel, after giving the pitch with no mention of a company name they want you to leave your name and phone number so they can get back to you. Kind of like tele-spam (registered trademark pending on the term tele-spam). Well hopefully I cost them some time since I tried my best to fill up as much tape/disk as possible telling them just what I thought about them calling someone on the do not call list. Hopefully it consumed a fair amount of time as they had other people listen to the message I left. Slow them down from processing any morons that actually left their information.
If you rely on Government to help you, you'll get screwed every time. If you want to be defended against spam, junk calls, etc., the only effective means is to take matters into your own hands.
1. Get a telephone answering machine.
2. Do not answer the telephone unless the caller identifies himself and his intentions and proves to be someone you want to talk to.
This gets rid of all junk calls, and is not thwarted by caller ID faking.
Problem solved, simply and easily.
Hey, you've established a business relationship, right?
Call him up every day and ask if he'd like to buy some random object in your possession.
Offer to take him off your list if he'll take you off his.
Especially try to sell things that would get him kicked out of the military. Offer to sell him gay porn.
I got sick of FAX spam at work, especially since most of them came from the same Canadian company I couldn't contact directly. They left only a (toll-free) removal number.
:)
The first time, I tried it. I think they stopped for all of a month.
Once they restarted, I decided to make us unprofitable to FAX. I called their toll-free removal number, and when asked to confirm that I had entered the correct number, I would press "2" for no, starting the whole process over again. Then I automated this with just the autodialer on the phone. It got to the point that when I got through (which wasn't often), the autodialer could hold their line open for upwards of an hour. To prevent this from tying up the main phone line, I tapped the FAX line so that it now was usable on one office phone (in addition to the FAX) only -- mine. Once the legitimate FAXes stopped at 5 pm, but I still had hours to kill before the day's paperwork arrived, I'd set the autodialer to work. All I had to do was hit a button if the phone actually got through to the removal service. Having access to the FAX line also came in handy at other times, but that was just a nice side effect of the need to autodial.
Since we had a toll-free line ourselves, I knew they were probably paying about 7 or 8 cents a minute for their incoming calls. I wanted to cost them ten dollars a day, but I just couldn't get through all that often as the line was almost always busy (big surprise).
Then I got the bright idea to subject one of our contractors (who NEVER paid on time, or paid less than was billed) to a little annoyance of their own, so I had the autodialer helpfully "remove" them instead of ourselves. This part at least I know to have worked, their level of Canadian FAX spam tripled instantly. It didn't get us any of the owed money, but it still felt nice.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.