Jump to content

Do Not Call List - National


teacher

Recommended Posts

DoNotCall.gov is now open. You can sign up to place up to three phone lines on the national registry to block telemarketers. The site is extremely slow today since it is Day One of sign up.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just kept it open in a separate tab and would go back and hit refresh until it went through. It takes three screens - one to enter your info, one to confirm your info, and one to tell you that you have 72 hours to reply to the confirm email. I did six numbers in an hour of going back to check. It let's you do three at once. By the time I had 1 home phone and 3 family home phones, I went ahead and did my sister's two phones since her computer is waiting for me to tell her how to install a new hard drive and replace all the software. ;) It has been three hours since I submitted and I still don't have the confirm emails. :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Loque

Yep, busy, busy, busy. It kept timeing out on me. I got past the first screen, but after entering my phone number it would not go to next screen. Bookmark and go back some other time is the best idea. Thanks for posting the notice and url.....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Read an article that says a telelmarketer can be fined up to $11,000 per call. Does the gov't take it all or does the consumer get a piece of it for his/her troubles?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In one description that I saw, it said that several states will be adding their list to the government's. Also, some states said they would not. I already added my phone numbers to California's list. Does anyone know if CA is one of the wills or won'ts?And Teacher, while we are on the subject. Why is won't apostrophed? I wo not?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Martini Lover

Its been Eleven Hours since I signed up and haven't gotten the email back from them. Hope they aren't as slow getting these people to quit calling me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IAnd Teacher, while we are on the subject. Why is won't apostrophed? I wo not?
I think it is a contraction for will not. You can't say willn't very easily. Won't just sounds better. Better ask an English teacher (one that teaches English, not one from England :blink: ) I just teach computers. That keeps me busy enough.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You should read all the information here:http://www.ftc.gov/donotcall/National Do Not Call RegistryThe National Do Not Call Registry is open for business, putting consumers in charge of the telemarketing calls they get at home. The Federal Government created the national registry to make it easier and more efficient for you to stop getting telemarketing sales calls you don't want. You can register online at DONOTCALL.GOV if you have an active email address. If you live in a state west of the Mississippi River (including Minnesota or Louisiana), you can call toll-free, 1-888-382-1222 (TTY 1-866-290-4236), from the number you wish to register. Phone registration will open to the entire nation on July 7. Registration is free.The Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and the states will begin enforcing the National Do Not Call Registry on Oct. 1, 2003. That's when consumers who put their numbers on the registry by August 31, 2003 will notice a downturn in the number of telemarketing calls they get. Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop most, but not all, telemarketing calls.This site has information for you—whether you're a consumer interested in signing up for the National Do Not Call Registry, or a telemarketer or seller interested in learning more about your responsibilities related to the Telemarketing Sales Rule. You also can learn how your state do not call list relates to the National Do Not Call Registry.Last updated: June 27, 2003--------------------------------------------Also, you should tell the 4 national credit bureaus not to tsell your information to anyone. This will put a stop to those junk mail offers for credit cards.Credit bureaus can, however, create lists containing the names, addresses, and phone numbers of consumers with good credit and sell them to telemarketers and direct-mail marketers. (Names, addresses, and phone numbers are not considered "non-public personal information" because they may be obtained from a variety of publicly-accessible sources, such as phone directories.) Consumers may call the 1-888-5OPTOUT number to request that all four major credit bureaus not include their information on these marketing lists. There is no deadline for this process -- consumers may call the number at any time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Federal enforcement of the National Do Not Call Registry begins October 1, 2003. All consumers whose numbers are on the registry by August 31, 2003 will notice a downturn in telemarketing calls starting October 1, 2003. Consumers who register after September 1, 2003 will notice a drop in telemarketing calls within three months of the date they register.
so it's not instant - gonna be awhile longer yet :blink:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

brucekrymow

Thanks, Teach! thankyou.giftelephone.gifBoy, did I get lucky! I got on immediately and registered two lines at 3:02am EDT and received confirmation at 3:11am EDT of same, gleefully greeted with the display, "This registration will be effective until 6/29/2008." checkeredflag.gif

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cluttermagnet
Thanks, Teach! thankyou.giftelephone.gifBoy, did I get lucky!  I got on immediately and registered two lines at 3:02am EDT and received confirmation at 3:11am EDT of same, gleefully greeted with the display, "This registration will be effective until 6/29/2008." checkeredflag.gif
Very good, Bruce-I figured it would not be busy in the wee hours. I tried it sometime after 3AM and got the site right away. I did not go through the registration but I probably will. Something in the back of my mind is causing me to just stop and think a little. Years ago there was a problem with the Swine Flu vaccine. They were offering to administer it where I worked. Something told me I didn't want it. I have always been pretty healthy and rarely prey to colds or flu. No kids in the house- maybe that is why. My two office mates got theirs. Anyway, fairly soon after the big panic and the administration of all those flu shots, reports started to emerge about certain individuals who were sickened by the vaccine. I think I remember a few older folks even developed complications and died. Their deaths were blamed on the vaccine. We have seen a few accounts recently about folks immunized for smallpox developing serious side effects.My point? Seems like a national do not call list could later be abused outrageously either by unlawful means or perhaps due to congress reconsidering and selling out the public. We have seen similar dastardly deeds resulting from the dot com boom/ bust cycle. Website owners turned around and broke their promises to their customers regarding privacy, selling out their users to commercial interests. Or maybe they just went belly up and the new owners felt no obligation to honor promises made by the previous owners. I believe I remember reading that even MS was one of those promise breakers who sold out a bunch of their Hotmail users by unilaterally changing their terms and trashing their previous promises.I'm just not as trusting as I used to be. When I look at how I am presently handling telemarketers and other obnoxious people, it seems to work very well for me. Anyone I want to filter out meets an impenetrable wall of answering machine plus Caller ID ®. Yes, my phone could still ring every time those guys call, but I turn off the ringer, more often than not. In the same room as these two devices, I can clearly hear the answering machine pick up and play the outgoing message. I immediately look at the caller ID display and pick up only if I know the caller. One small price to pay is sometimes my system filters out wanted calls, say from certain cell phones. Anyone who I want to hear from will get an immediate pickup anyway if they simply begin leaving a message on the machine and I recognize them. Bottom line: _total_, 100 percent rejection of all unwanted calls, and a very low error rate on rejecting wanted calls. This system works for me because it is not a family situation with multiple users on any of our lines. I know this would not work for everyone.Oh, one little means of payback by the telemarketers is to use more sophisticated autodialers that detect an answering machine response. Hint: constant 'energy detect' vs. intermittant detection if it is a live human saying "Hello? (pause) "Hello" (pause)..." If they detect an answering machine message, they wait until they detect 'energy' drop off, then quickly start their own recorded message or hand off to a human harrasser- er, telemarketer. Real clever- "...oh, Hi! This is Joe Blow. Sorry I keep missing you. We are having a wonderful sale on (choice vacation swampland, handyman services, computer geeks a fixin', satellite TV or cable- ad nauseum). Well, whatever. So they still get to waste a few seconds of mine here and there when I go to review messages and hit the Delete button on them.Ah, heck- I will probably sign up eventually, but I do have that little inner voice lately saying "don't be a sucker". I think of those times when I naively gave up personal info I did not have to when registering software, usually freeware, offered by some bigger companies. Also especially those times I replied to UCE junk which promised to remove my email from their list, hoping in vain to get dropped. Yeah, right. Like that is really going to happen. Well, maybe in a small minority of cases reputable merchants will actually respect your privacy. Those ones are rare. Nowadays I'm always suspicious, even of government. I've been sold out one too many times. Bah, Humbug! :blink:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

There was a newspaper columnist who suggested that one answer a telemarketing call by asking the caller to hold for a second and then simply put the phone down and walk away for a bit. The columnist's position was:

  • The telemarketer cannot make other calls
  • The telemarketer will be bothered because this screws up his average calls per minute/hour/?
  • The average telemarketer works only three weeks so he wasn't screwing up anyone's job

I thought his technique a bit extreme. I just hear a few words, then say "I'm not interested" and hang up. I'm only as put out as I would be having to screen calls listening to the answering machine or going to the phone to see what callerID number was there. I think many people stay on the line to hear the telemarketer go into stage two or three of their presentation. And the longer they stay, the harder they feel it is to hang up. Why?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

brucekrymow

Hi, Clutter ~I support your stance on its principle alone and feel your cynicism is truly warranted, however, (ha! you thought there was a 'but' coming, dincha?) in this case there is absolutely nothing to lose as there is simply nothing offered or entered on your behalf but a 'phone number and an e-mail, and then only if you are registering online rather than via POTS. Let me assure you with a wielding knowledge by which I hope you never behold, the Federal Government has far more documented on you than you can fathom.That aside, taking a moment to consider all aspects is surely wiser than than blindly joining any lemming-like movement. :)------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Little ~ For years I have been doing just what was suggested, tie them up. I oft say, "Hold on....", and just put the phone down or turn it on speakerphone until the dead tone is activated. Most of the time though, I find ulcer-relieving recreation when I toy with them by talking with an accent or some other two-minute thespian panoply usually bordering on the nutty. I feel no sense of obligation required on my part to be polite anymore than you might were I to appear on your stoop banging on the window at 4 in the morn. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

SonicDragon

Personally, i usually try to be nice to the telemarketers that call. I usually let them talk etc, have a conversation, and don't disrespect them, if i'm not doing anthing important. I feel bad for them. The way i think of it... if your a telemarketer, your not very financially well off and your life didn't turn out quite they way u wanted it to. I'm not saying that being a telemarketer isn't a resonably decent, honest way to make some money... but u know what i mean. They don't know that your eating dinner when they called or that your having a bad day or that they made you get off the couch. If they did call you in the middle of dinner, be thankful that your eating and not working, calling people who are rude to you all day. If they make you get off the couch, good! It's good for you! If your having a bad day, it doesn't give you the right to make other people's day bad too. But, what really bugs me is when you pick up the phone and there is no one there! That's worce than having telemarketers try and sell you something!Just food for thought!(PS, yes, i did sign up for the do not call list. Very fast, no problems. I haven't got the email yet though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's a local newspaper story with some good details on this subject:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...28/MN222319.DTLAs you can see, this list is not a panacea as there are numerous exceptions. For instance, political organizations can still call, charities can still call, insurance companies can call (within state laws), companies where you have brought something call for up to 18 months after the last purchase, payment or delivery and companies that you made an inquiry to or submitted an application to can call for 3 months after the last contact. But in the latter case, you CAN ask them not to call and they have to abide. Oh, and calls to conduct surveys are allowed also. Some are predicting that there will be a lot more "survey" calls. Possible call scenario:Hi, we're calling to conduct a survey on sump pumps. We have found that 77 out of 100 people in your neighborhood do not have a sump pump installed and are therefore exposed to serious problems during heavy rains. Are you experiencing mildew, basement flooding and/or house structural damage due to occasional flooding? Do you have a sump installed now? What brand is it? When did you purchase it? Do you have plans to purchase a new sump pump in the next 6 months? How much would you consider spending for a new/replacement sump pump? Etc., etc...If you choose to participate in the "survey", based on your answers, you might subsequently get a mailer from Jack's sump pumps purportedly giving you the survey "results" or maybe a salesperson knocking on your door.The complete do not call list is available for purchase for $7000. These will be all good, working numbers! What if the list is purchased and used by someone outside of the USA? Say a mobile operation that moves form location to location? Just like much spam email that is now sent from offshore locations, generally out of reach of the government.Lots of possible loopholes and questions with this list...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cluttermagnet

Thanks, guys- Lots of good points made all round.Bruce, it sounds like you may have seen some things you might have preferred not to, with regard to government investigation and archiving of personal data. They have had some astonishing capabilities all along, despite incessant turf wars between agencies and the occasional inconvenience of laws protecting individual privacy. Since 9-11, a lot of that is quickly falling away under the so-called "Patriot Act" and other such initiatives. Further, the proposed TIA agency would elevate this intelligence mining and analysis to previously unimagined heights of sophistication. It is not surprising that there has been widespread oppostion to the TIA and various 'rat out your neighbors' proposals. While all that is chilling, I was referring to a slightly different aspect of privacy than that which runs along "1984" lines. I was only addressing the commercial exploitation of personal information, having it firmly in mind that assurances of privacy often turn out to be false. In that regard, I am simply saying that the creation of this unsophisticated data base might lead to unintended consequences, namely that the list might be exploited by dishonest businesses who could misapply it by devious means to target for extra abuse the very folks who are trying to be left alone. Similar to how spam works. Mine, attack, sell.Think about it- this would be a hotlist of great value, containing the names and phone numbers of people who are definitely 'there' at those numbers. These folks are the ones who actually make a habit of answering their phones every time they ring. They are therefore particularly tired of all this telemarketing! They are highly motivated to put a stop to all the calls. These are not folks like me who are screening electronically and rarely picking up the receiver. The percentage of 'good' entries in the list would be exceptionally high, approaching 100 percent, limited only by human error data entry mistakes. If I were a 'bad guy', what's to prevent me from buying the list and then sleazing around offshore, moving as often as necessary, and harrassing the folks on this list with a barrage of unwanted sales calls. How is this thing going to work when we are intending it to apply as law to the United States, yet we really live in a world market today? I talk to techs in India who speak heavily-accented english as a second language. Hey, it was a US number I dialed, but here I am talking to someone in India who does not share my culture or accent, but I have to deal with them just the same because they are who I get when I call that US company.(Edit above paragraph: "...hotlist of great value, containing the phone numbers of people who are definitely 'there'... [but not names] ") And would the list include the emails, if given, or just numbers? Would the list be done up in some ghastly MS format such that the emails were there but were 'suppressed', but where sharpies could figure out how to peek inside a suppressed column/'field' to snatch that info anyway? You all know that a lot of the internet scams happening today are directed against the wealthy US market sector and run from offshore. They get away with so much. There really is little or no recourse. The same scams that are being used to defraud folks via the internet could readily be adapted to telephone presentation from overseas. Even basically 'honest' merchants could resort to offshore agents to establish a sales beachhead, thus successfully circumventing the protections intended by this new law and database. I think ibe98765 is right when he points out that this thing has a lot of holes in it to begin with. The telemarketers will find a way. They will buy more congressmen. Whatever it takes. I would love to be proven wrong on this eventually, but I kind of believe that this thing is not going to accomplish as much as it promises, and it may be defanged in short order (a matter of a few years). Then all you are left with is a suckers list, most of the data still being good. A certain percentage would be 'bad' by then as a result of people moving.I can think of other scams besides the 'survey' gambit. How about you just lie to people you are telemarketing to. Assume a fictitious identity and a purpose you think might resonate with the target's values, and if you manage to ingratiate yourself with certain of them, then you steer them to your legitimate identity. You have done your dirty work from offshore, rounded up a few pre-qualified suckers, and gotten their verbal permission for the 'real you' to call them. Or- who knows- maybe you are slick enough to con them into initiating contact. Your patsy, having been steered your way, calls you! 'The lie' is a standard gambit used by the collections industry, a subset of telemarketers (loosely speaking). Deception is SOP among those workers. Why couldn't you adapt some of their over the top antics to general telemarketing? I wish I could be a bit more upbeat on the prospects for this no call list to work. I bet that those few folks who press their point and actually win judgements in court against offenders will mostly have a difficult time actually collecting on those awards.Here's another dillemma- what should those folks who are paying extra for unpublished or unlisted numbers do about all this? They know they have to be very careful not to compromise their numbers by being quite selective as to who they give them out to. Should they trust that their number will not end up getting linked to their names? What lists of various types might be compared with the do not call list to map out a more detailed picture about some people? Who knows, today there are probably plenty of clever associative algorithms used to tease out previously unavailable inferences between various databases when they are compared. That is pretty much where TIA is heading anyway. Unlisted numbers get plenty of annoying sales calls as it is, because the telemarketers are often using alphabet-like attacks. Their dialer parks on a prefix like 202/ 555-xxxx and dials from 0000 up through 9999. Does it ring? Does it answer? Sell, sell, sell! Unlisted? Oh, sorry. Not to me it isn't, buddy- I'm just a tireless, semi-smart machine. B)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cluttermagnet
If your having a bad day, it doesn't give you the right to make other people's day bad too. But, what really bugs me is when you pick up the phone and there is no one there! That's worce than having telemarketers try and sell you something!
I have heard about this from so many different friends. It seems to be a common occurence. The phone rings, you answer, nothing. Nobody there. While the imagination can conjure up all sorts of bizarre possible explanations for this, my chief theory is that these sorts of calls reflect an 'overloaded' autodialer telemarketing operation. As I understand it, there is some statistical work involved in the staffing of these 'boiler room' operations. There is some sort of expected relationship between the number of staff persons you need to have on duty vs. a particular machines native capabilities. While there is no doubt a lot of custom tweaks they can do to configure a dialer various ways, there is still some uncertainty as to just what the ratio will be on a given day between total numbers dialed vs. the number of 'live ones' the machine thinks it has detected and hands off to a human operator. Lately, the handoff has often been to a recorded message instead of a live telemarketer. The hardware 'knows' when it is dealing with an answering machine. So leaving a recorded message will suffice in that case. For a lot of reasons, the handoff is often not necessarily smooth or timely. Have you ever hollered "Hello?" several times, and finally someone responded? I have. My theory is that these calls were generated by an autodialer operation. My best guess is that these calls have been dialed through to you but the system is presently overloaded and all the staff operators are tied up with other calls. I think these dialers are often smart enough to be able to distinguish between an outgoing message from an answering machine or a real, live human, repeatedly saying "Hello?" (pause) "Hello?"... It is fairly straightforeward to make that call depending on whether the dialer detects closely repeated pauses ('a live one') or just constant 'energy detect' (an answering machine recorded message blathering on and on...) I'm sure there is a whole menu of options for timeouts for defaults to kick in, various ways of defining your parameters for a likely 'live one'. I'm sure that industry must have slick magazines chock full of how-to articles, ads for all sorts of dialers and torture room accessories, articles about how to tweak the Zoompus Maximus 5000 autodialer for minimum false alarms and maximum 'live ones', articles from 'recovered telemarketers' about how they finally learned how to not hate the image in the mirror, etc. :lol: Of course, there are many other possible explanations for 'dead' calls, but many can be easily ruled out, such as FAXes, modems, etc. because they all reveal themselves by sending tones attempting to do their analog/ digital 'handshake'. I have also had rare instances of getting only a 'simplex' link on long distance phone calls instead of the necessary 'duplex' link. I could hear the parties I called but they could not hear me at all and so they kept hanging up. That's called "line impairments" and they do come in a variety of forms, but are fairly rare in well-maintained phone systems. And of course it might be an axe murderer or other such pervert on the other end of the line, but what do you think the chances of that are? B) For me, the autodialer theory has held up best over the years. I would be interested in hearing other theories, funny or credible. :D After all, this _is_ the Water Cooler, and Jeeber has been keeping mighty quiet the past few days. You don't suppose the aliens finally got him, do you? B) Hmmm- you don't suppose all those calls are from aliens? Yikes! Now I'm scaring myself!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Got in this morning - and got my email confirmation within minutes. All ready to go now - hope others can get on the list without problems. Remember if you don't respond within 72 hours of when you signed up your number will not be added to the list. So if you get your e-mail too late you should redo it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest LilBambi
Thanks, Teach! thankyou.giftelephone.gifBoy, did I get lucky!  I got on immediately and registered two lines at 3:02am EDT and received confirmation at 3:11am EDT of same, gleefully greeted with the display, "This registration will be effective until 6/29/2008." checkeredflag.gif
I got in late last night and had my response back no time at all. They have finally got it down to a manageble level of people signing up all at once.Quite understandable ... we're all fed up with telemarketers and spammers. And that's a fact.I think it would be against the law to solicit those who are on the do not call lists. The biggest problem will be following up and making the complaint. I bookmarked the donotcall.gov address ... it has the complaint department link right there :lol:
We have seen similar dastardly deeds resulting from the dot com boom/ bust cycle. Website owners turned around and broke their promises to their customers regarding privacy, selling out their users to commercial interests. Or maybe they just went belly up and the new owners felt no obligation to honor promises made by the previous owners. I believe I remember reading that even MS was one of those promise breakers who sold out a bunch of their Hotmail users by unilaterally changing their terms and trashing their previous promises.
Actually, they didn't start that sort of thing at all ... they borrowed what seems to work quite well, unfortunately, for the credit card companies.They do the same thing all the time and have done for longer than the dot com bust.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest LilBambi

An iron twist of fate:A Spam Trap for Anti-Spamdonotcall list's validation email being trapped by Yahoo's Spam Filter! LOL!Is that ironic or what?Yahoo Spam Filter Thwarts FTC

Consumers who used Yahoo Mail e-mail accounts to register for the Federal Trade Commission's new do-not-call service were met with an ironic twist Friday -- Yahoo's spam filter intercepted confirmation messages sent from FTC servers.The glitch was discovered by Washington security firm NetFrameworks during routine evaluations of spam filters that the company performs for itsclients.
"Upon learning of the situation, we promptly initiated communication with the e-mail service provider that the FTC is employing to seek out needed information so that we could adapt our systems," wrote Osako in a message to Wired News.She added that the FTC's messages are now being delivered to users'inboxes.The incident highlights a growing concern on the part of many e-mail usersthat the spam-filtering software being installed by more and morecompanies is blocking important e-mail.So-called false positives have been known to occur up to 5 percent of thetime for filtered personal messages and up to 15 percent of the time forcommercial messages, according to various estimates. However, Yahoo's rate for commercial messages was pegged at an unusually high 22 percent in one recent study from Assurance Systems, a Colorado-based vendor of e-mail marketing services.Yahoo has disputed the findings, and representatives note that the company does not completely block e-mail, but sends them to a bulk mail folder for users to review.
Spam filters were not the only cause of frustration for consumers looking to sign up for the do-not-call list Friday. The service's website was slow and even down at times throughout the day. The FTC reported 735,000 consumers had signed up within the first 17 hours -- more than 12 percent of the 60 million who are expected to sign up in total.
Yep, we're sick of spam! And I didn't sign up till 24 hours later because the site was so busy when I tried ... so mine isn't even in that 17 hour total!
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...