Canada and USA Feds Unite To Fight Spammers and Telemarketers

Reader Freshly Exhumed writes: Telemarketers in Canada and the USA have essentially been bypassing each nation's do-not-call registry by basing their efforts from the other or from off-shore locations, while cross border spam remains rampant. Now the CRTC, Canada's telecom and broadcast regulator, has announced it signed a partnership agreement with the Federal Trade Commission of the United States to fight against spam and calls from pesky telemarketers. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) consists of all unsolicited telecommunications, unsolicited commercial email (spam), and other "illegal electronic threats" that cover anti-spam laws in the United States and Canada.

Comments

What would make the most difference

[whoever57]

Spam is largely a solved problem. I see little spam. However, I am receiving increasing numbers of telemarketing calls. These calls used spoofed caller-id so that the source appears to be very local. Because they are spoofing caller-id, they don't care about do-not-call lists.

What we need is for telecom companies to block spoofed caller-id.

Re:What would make the most difference

[fustakrakich]

What we need is to make it impossible to spoof caller ID, which I'm sure isn't very difficult technically, but the telecoms are accomplices in the business.

Re:won't work

[Strider-]

The biggest issue is all the exceptions they've managed to weasel in. I don't care if I have a business relationship with you, or if you're a political party, or a charity, or whatever else. I still don't want you to advertise to me, that's why I put my number on the damned registry. That should be a clue that I do not take kindly to people calling me trying to sell me things. The only time I want to hear from my ISP, or bank, is if there is a problem with my account, or some other similar threat.