DirectTV to Pay $5.4M in Privacy Fines

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday December 13, 2005 @08:48AM from the privacy-isn't-a-fad dept.

abscissa writes "Remember the do-not-call registry? DirecTV is in big trouble for violating the list, and faces the largest civil assessment ever obtained of $5.4M for harassing people over the phone at home and ignoring the registry. Although it looks like DirecTV was outsourcing all their telemarketing (obviously), the FTC recieved 1.4 million complaints, the biggest category of do-not-call violations ever recieved." From the article: "Majoras was quick to emphasize that the most important part of the settlement is that it sends a warning to companies that they cannot hire telemarketers and then turn their backs on whether or not the rules are followed."

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Fact jumble by ergo98 · 2005-12-13 09:04 · Score: 5, Informative

It takes 1.4 million complaints to get action over the DNC list then I would say the DNC list is somewhat of a failure.

I'm going to guess that CNN jammed together some facts - this article makes some guesses at the number of people on the list that were called, saying "in the thousands". Certainly not in the millions. And of course it's doubtful many of the people called bothered to file a complaint, which is why the FTC just arbitrarily assessed a penalty of the maximum penalty per call per day.

The article implies that the entire program has received 1.4 million complaints overall, which seems reasonable.