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No, Your Phone Didn't Ring. So Why Voice Mail From a Telemarketer? (lifehacker.com)
Slashdot reader midwestsilentone tipped us off to a growing problem. Lifehacker reports:
New technology allows telemarketers to leave ringless voicemail messages, and it's a method that's gaining traction. While there are laws to regulate businesses when they call consumers, some groups argue that ringless voicemail shouldn't count. The New York Times reports,"ringless voicemail providers and pro-business groups...argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing"... After receiving a petition from a ringless voicemail provider, the Federal Trade Commission has started to collect public comments on this issue. So what can you do about it? First, you can head here to leave your public comment and if you're getting these voicemails, you can file a complaint with the FCC here.
Presumably that only applies if you're in the U.S. But I'd be curious to hear how many Slashdot readers have experienced this.
Presumably that only applies if you're in the U.S. But I'd be curious to hear how many Slashdot readers have experienced this.
considering they're probably going to allow this for politicans...and the current head of the FCC has done a wonderful job of giving the public the middle finger; letting them know he does *NOT* work for them and does not care about their opinions...even going as far as to MOCK the American Public. All you can expect from the FCC is a reply mocking you for not wanting a company to do business...no matter how much of a harassment it is.
But I'd be curious to hear how many Slashdot readers have experienced this.
Not lately nor from telemarketers. But we used to do this back in the late 90s and early 00's
Our circle of friends consisted by the vast majority of "night owls" forced to work first shift jobs.
If it was after midnight and we wanted to get a message to someone or perhaps talk on the phone, we would leave a message directly on the voicemail server without calling their phone.
If they were awake and saw the voicemail indicator, they could call back.
If they were asleep, you'd either not get a call back or get it the next day or something, but safe in the knowledge you didn't wake anyone up.
It just involved swapping carrier voicemail system numbers along with your phone number.
This was before such info was online, or at least easy to find, but you can always call in and get the number for your own voicemail server, since its entire purpose of existing was so you can check your voicemail from someone elses phone.
I am however greatly saddened to see such a useful thing abused in this way.
If they have the right to fill up my voicemail with message I don't want, I should have the same right to continually call them, tying up their phone line. Sounds fair, right?
AC comments get piped to
I had my cell phone carrier remove the voice mail feature from my phone. Take that suckers!
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It's adorable that you think a complaint to Trump's FCC is going to have any effect.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's always been the case that the voicemail systems for cell phones have a generic number that can be used to access the system itself (at which point the system prompts for which phone number you want to use for leaving or accessing a message). Generally there's a known mapping for region or phone prefix to VM number (e.g., an example or two) though I think at least AT&T uses one system and number for all iphones. The only thing that's new is telemarketers realizing they might be able to workaround the restrictions by using this route.
I don't kind of hate voicemail but I really really hate it. With my provider I can't turn it off. So I have a voicemail saying, "Don't leave a voice mail." I got rid of a phone where I couldn't turn off the voicemail notifications.
Quite simply there should be a do not bother me law. Mail, phone, voicemail, or pretty much any government regulated resource that I have should not be available for people to market their crap. That includes charities and politicians.
I don't even want warnings. I turned on the weather warning texts that my local government offered and they basically spammed me with "Be prepared" or "There is a weather warning in a place so far away that I will never ever go there, ever." messages. I turned it off a day later. So if there is an alien invasion where they have guns that fire tornadoes, I still don't want a text or voicemail.
Marketeers should all die.
Tele-marketeers first of all.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
"argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing"
Correct, they should be classified as harassment. And since it's done over the telephone and likely come from out of state, the FBI has jurisdiction.
The telcos will charge the spammers for direct access to voicemail and will offer consumers a service (at additional cost) that will block voicemails from spammers.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I recorded the out of service SIT tone (the three rising beeps that you hear when you dial an out of service phone number) as the first thing on my outbound voicemail message. So my outbound message is "beep beep beep Hello this is me etc. etc.")
Most robodialers are programmed to hang up and remove the number from their dialing lists when they hear those three beeps.
Real people can still leave you a message, but it works amazingly well to keep spammers off of your voicemail.
You can download the sit tone from several places; just run the phrase "sit tone" through google and you'll find it.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Funny, but I have the opposite problem: I get lots of calls that ring, but when I answer there is nobody there. I assume these are mostly poorly programmed predictive dialers.
Poorly programmed only in the sense that they sometimes get more hits than they have available scammers to connect. So sometimes when you pick up you are denied the opportunity to waste their time. That disappoints me, anyway.
These too are on purpose. There are numbers from unique area codes that consistently, if not always, result in dead air when you do pick up. Once / twice would be considered a programming bug or a bad product. ALWAYS? nope.
Not many businesses would keep a botched product for first-contact, considering calls are more noticeable than junk mail and spam. After all, with a call you ALWAYS know when the mark is "live" as soon as they pick up. It's similar to sending email you expect to bounce because you're not sure of a spelling, just to see if an address is inactive or not.
My money here is on "surveillance", the sort you might get from debt collection agencies or cheap scouters finding potential marks for future spammers. You say "hello?" and hang up a second later?
Too late! "They" know the number works now. They now also know if you're male, female, young or old. For scouters, this is the equivalent of saying they have one more mark in a list of "100,000 VERIFIED email addresses for YOU to spam at the low, low price of X dollars per thousand"?
Debt collectors also don't care you say X fake name has nothing to do with you or your family at your house number. They swear they'll remove you from the list, only to call again a day later and promise the same, sometimes by the same phone rep. They poll to see what times you're picking up the phone, and they sometimes mention details of who they're targeting. They use fake caller ID numbers that start with a local area code + 3 digits that match your own phone's to incite familiarity AND evade code blocks. The last 4 digits are never repeated, defeating the purpose of your using cheap landline blocking hardware or cheap non-programmable smartphone call-rejection features.
I wish I had a homebased PBX system without the hassle of actually having to buy servers to do VOIP. That way, I could program responses and direct all unknown numbers to a honeypot like I've seen Google Voice users do.
I get those calls that pretend to be a real person, saying, 'Oh, sorry, I was just talking to my husband', and then go on about a proposed Royal Caribbean Cruise off FL. They won't stop when I say I'm not interested - it's obviously an automated call.
Far better than those Ed McMahon/Dick Clark ads in the 90s that told you that you were a winner, when you weren't! A lot of poor old saps fell for that one: those 2 should have been executed
LOL. I think you've got your tin foil hat on a bit too tight. Loosen it up and let the blood flow to your brain.
What sort of effective surveillance would they get merely from a hello? Determining age and sex? Good luck with that. For some reason a human operator can't even get my sex correct after talking to me for 2 minutes (yeah, I don't have a deep "manly" voice, but it's not girly either). And polling to know what times you are available? I doubt home buglers are that sophisticated.
You want to know why you get dead phone calls? It's because even poorly paid telemarketers are wasting money when they're sitting there not doing anything but waiting for you to answer your phone. The autodialers are designed to call multiple phone numbers at a time and take the first one that answer, then either hang up on the others or try to keep them on the line long enough for the next telemarketer to be ready for a new call (which is why even when you do get a person, there is a long pause before they are there).
You are absolutely right though about why they use the same area code, and more recently also the same first 3 digits. It prevents you from manually "blocking" their calls. Though ironically I found their tactics more effective when they were ONLY matching the area code. I get legit calls from my own area code often, but I've NEVER had a legit call from a number with the same first 3 digits. So when they do that, it's now easy for me to just ignore it.
In my world, it would be legal to use them as aiming tools for mortar target practice.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.