Cell Phone Directory Coming Soon

applemasker writes "According to this story on Yahoo News via the L.A. Times, an upcoming cell phone directory which supposedly includes 75% of all cell users is in the works. Some people are already receiving cell phone spam and telemarketing calls. Worse yet, unless you opt-out at the beginning of your contract, some carriers such as T-Mobile can gladly hand over your info (though the article says that T-Mobile is changing the contract now). Some good news though, Verizon Wireless has said that it will not share its customer lists. Still, maybe it's time to submit your cell number to the Do Not Call List if you haven't done so already." We had a related story last year.

Maybe I'm Naive but.....

[MacGod]

Maybe I'm naieve, but I personally think this would be a good idea. Telemarketers are irriting, no question, but worse still is losing a phone number and being unable to find it. I don't have to refer to the phone-book too often for landlines, but every time I do, it saves me mucho effort or results in me being able to contact someone I otherwise would not be able to.

Already on the DNC list

[Marxist Hacker 42]

funny- when I first signed up for the Federal DNC list, it asked me to provide up to 5 phone numbers. Didn't anybody else enter their cell numbers at that point?

Re:Expensive

[periol]

Right, and I'm sure you know just how well the "anti-junk fax laws" work. Or maybe you don't have one of them fax machines.

Terrible!!!!!

[Mz6]

With the abundance of web pages that allow users to simply type in a cell-phone number and a text message, I feel this might be a huge mistake publishing all of these numbers. How long would it take for a spam bot to cultivate through the database, pick-up all the numbers and spam them? My guess is that it shouldn't take more than a day to do.

"Wireless carriers say they doubt there will be widespread abuse. They point out that most mobile phones come equipped with caller ID, distinctive ring tones, call blocking and other tools to manage unwanted calls. And several carriers say they have made refunds to subscribers who have received unwanted calls. "

What they fail to understand is that, atleast with my carrier (Sprint), text messages pop up all the time. I have no options to block text messages from certain users, or only allow messages from those in my phone book. I think the biggest area won't be the unwanted calls, but rather the unwanted text messages that cost about as much as it does to send spam messages.

By far.. Worst idea EVER!

Jerks

[thebra]

Until recently, when customers switched carriers, their numbers changed as well, so marketers were reluctant to invest much in compiling databases.

For once I thought that something good was being done for the consumer...my mistake.

Re:Terrible!!!!!

[euphonaesthesia]

Not to mention, on most plans, one pays for text messages received [either deducted from a package of a number messages that one buys for a certain amount of money each month or charged a fee for using more messages than the number bought]. The inbox sizes are also quite small; even a small bit of spam would be even more annoying as it could quickly fill a relatively small quota.

Re:Terrible!!!!!

[prshaw]

>>How long would it take for a spam bot to cultivate through the database, pick-up all the numbers and spam them?

Why bother go through the database? Why not just spend a message to every number possible? It doesn't cost them anything to send the message, so they don't care if it is really in use or not.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Verizon sucks

[-tji]

Verizon already phone spams their own customers.

About a month ago, I got one of those annoying automated calls offering me "great new services" through Verizon. The recording said "Push 1 for more information".

So, I pushed '1' and waded went through several levels of systems until I could talk to a human. I asked him to set all my privacy preferences to prohibit any further calls or sharing of my personal information, and he was totally lost at how to proceed. He acted as if this was an unprecedented request.. "I don't have any idea how I could do that. We don't have any settings for that in the user accounts."

After spending 30 minutes on the phone with this guy, I was pissed to have wasted so much time and just wanted to hang up. But he agreed to submit some paper form that was supposed to ensure this did not happen again.. He did not inspire a lot of confidence, but I haven't gotten another call.. yet.

Re:Do Not Call List

[ericspinder]

I still get sales calls on phone sometimes, they say that they are "surveys" and once an extermination service called just "because someone in the area needed their service". Those kind of calls are allowed by the DNC list. Trust me you will see more and more of them and with cell phone number avaiable, they might be hitting them hard. Right now telemarketers have a good list of people who will take the time to listen, but cell phones are a fresh market. Heck there are many teenagers and young adult who only use cell phones, they will want to tap that market. If the value of this fresh market is judged by the telemarketers to be greater than the costs (fines), we'll be seeing bunches of calls on our once private numbers, at least until it levels out.

I still use the same old line that I used before the DNC list "I do not ever, ever respond in any way to unsolisited telephone calls of any type. Please take me off your list and I hope that you have a nice day ".

Re:T-Mobile

[Geoff-with-a-G]

Friggin' slashdot.
Let's look at the quote again:
Worse yet, unless you opt-out at the beginning of your contract, some carriers such as T-Mobile CAN gladly hand over your info

No, it does not sound like they are selling personal info. It sounds like the boiler-plate contract that their lawyers created to be as all-encompassing as possible grants them the right to do that (along with probably the right to eat your children and harvest your organs). That is not at all the same thing as actually acting upon those rights. This particular clause in the contract just came under scrutiny, and the first thing they did was say "don't worry, we'll fix it."

Look, I agree that it's important to review these contracts, and to reign them in to prevent abuse. But there's this absurd mentality that all big corporations are like a ship full of Borg, bearing down on you, bent on destruction. There are good companies, and there are bad companies, but pretty much every large company has lawyers, else they would have been sued back to being a small company over something ridiculous (think googol-family suing Google). Those lawyers write the contracts, and they try to write them so that there's no chance their company can ever be held liable for anything bad at all. That doesn't mean the company is evil and intends to actually do all the things that it's allowed to.

As soon as you have credible reports of T-Mobile selling personal information, then feel free to start yelling about it. But right now the only facts that we have are that their contract would have allowed them to do that, and that as soon as this was pointed out, they said they're changing it.