Immunize Your Cell Phone From Telemarketers
telemarketing posts
FTC Implementing Ban on Certain Automated Robocalls
The ban will go into effect September 1st, and will penalize perpetrators at a rate of $16,000 per harassing call, unless the recipient has given the telemarketer written consent to be contacted. According to the Associated Press, the ban will not apply to non-sales-related automated calls. That being the case, you can still expect to hear those creepy stilted voices during calls from organizations like political parties, charities, banks, and health care providers.
Man Jailed for Terrorist Threat Against Telemarketers
By now, you've probably thought about harming, or at least threatening, a telemarketer, the bane of the evening hours. Fortunately, we're here to warn you that it might be a bad idea.Just ask Charles Papenfus. Or rather, ask him if you could get a hold of him. Currently he is being held in a Fostoria, Ohio jail for making a "terrorist threat," reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The so-called threat was made over the phone to a
Unsolicited Text Messages as Bad as Phone Calls, Court Says
Let's hope that the Simon & Schuster or marketing firm ipsh! employee who, six years ago, decided to send out thousands of unsolicited text messages reading, "the next call you take may be your last," has lost their job. If they haven't yet, then they probably will soon (assuming Simon & Schuster is forced to cough up the roughly $90 million in fines and payouts associated with the class action lawsuit it's facing for the ill-advised Stephen King promo).
In 2003, to promote the then new Stephen King novel, 'Cell,' the publisher used a list of 100,000 phone numbers collected by a third party, not involved in the case, to send the offending text message. One of the text's recipients, Laci Satterfield, filed suit on behalf of herself and 60,000 others, claiming the company violated the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). The act prohibits automatic telephone dialing systems from making calls to non-consensual cell phone owners.
Telemarketers Fined $1.2 Million for Illegal Calls
Woohoo! It's really working! The government is getting almost $1.2 million from two telemarketing companies that violated the Do Not Call Rule. Take that, suckers.
Westgate and All In One Vacation Club now respectively owe $900,000 and $275,000, after repeatedly violating the Federal Trade Commission's rule against calling people on the Do Not Call (DNC) Registry. Westgate bought the phone numbers from Brandarama.com, where customers answered travel surveys without being informed they would be contacted by telemarketers. All In One got their numbers from vacation sweepstakes entries. Both companies then called people with offers of timeshares and vacation deals.
We're extremely happy that telemarketers are on notice, but we do wonder why the U.S. Treasury gets to keep all the money. We're really the ones who suffer, especially when our favorite TV shows are on. How about throwing a little something our way, Treasury? [From: NetworkWorld]
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TrueCall Fights Telemarketers and Unknown Callers
Telemarketers-turned-inventors from the United Kingdom have started shipping TrueCall (£99.99), a device that acts as an automated secretary on your land line, either forwarding trusted numbers to your phone or answering untrusted numbers with an automated message and shooing them away. When an unrecognized number dials in, TrueCall asks them who they are and then rings you asking whether or not you want to take it. Sure, it's not the most fun way to automatically ditch unscrupulous callers, but we'd like to listen in on the conversation when a robocall reaches this baby -- it'd be like one wall talking to another wall.[Via Slashdot]
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