FCC Cracks Down on Robocalls

Cara_Latham writes "If you want to receive annoying robocalls from telemarketers you will have to opt in. Federal Communications Commission rules now require that telemarketers get your consent before dialing your number. Telemarketers will also have to obtain consent even if they had previously 'done business with' the consumer on the receiving end of a call."

Re:Bypass login/registration

[Dynedain]

Bahhh... turns out they're using a referral check from Google News, follow the link here to get around it. [google.com]

Link to WSJ and not FCC?

[bmo]

A paywall?

Are you effing serious, subby?

http://www.fcc.gov/guides/robocalls [fcc.gov]

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BMO

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Text messaging

[Master Moose]

Glad I don't live in the US - The whole paying to receive calls and messages is unheard of here (NZ) and as far as I am aware, most other countries around the world. . Unless roaming and then I believe universally you are pinged with exorbitant cost.

Politicians excepted, of course

[cusco]

I notice that there is no sign of stopping congresscritters, or the survey-takers in their employ, from robocalling. Since that's the vast majority of robocalls that I get I doubt that this is going to make any change in my life.

FYI, it's not enough to tell a phone caller to take you off their list. You need to say, "Put me on your Do Not Call List." They're required by law to do so, and any time they sell or rent their phone list the DNC list is required to go with it. If they tell you they're not required to have a DNC List because they work for some slimeball pretend non-profit that does political work I've found that the following technique works. Say, "If I were to cuss and swear at you then you would put our number on a list of people not to call again. Please put our number on that list." Those two simple changes changed the number of calls that an acquaintence got from 7-8 a night to 7-8 a week.

If you're ever required to put down a phone number, for store discount cards or something, use the same number that I (and a hundred other people do). [phone]. You'll be amazed at the number of cashiers that think it's really your phone number.

Re:I'm done with telephones.

[cusco]

VOIP is great . . . until your Internet connection goes down. Our land line has gone down once, for a couple of hours, since 1997. We've lost Internet connectivity for days at times.

Forward it to your carrier's spam address

[Peter Simpson]

For AT&T it's 7726 ("spam" on the keys). They appear to be using the information provided to go after the spammers. Plus, if you forward it, you (and they) have a record so you can apply for a refund of the SMS fees on those messages.

Re:What about Slashdot comments?

[Ark42]

AT&T **always** has removed text charges I complain about. And I call and complain about a 9 cent charge I didn't want. I don't even have a text plan, and don't text anybody. I keep telling them to block all texts always no matter what, but whenever one shows up on my phone, I get charged for it. Again, it has, fortunately, been super easy to call AT&T and complain, every single time.
Pretty sure they're paying the support staff a lot more money for the time spent on the call to reverse a 9 cent charge. If everybody did this, I'm sure cell companies would lose enough money to get their act together.

Re:This won't change anything

[0111 1110]

Verizon land lines already have a whitelisting system. I use it. In fact I wouldn't keep a land line at all without it. Unfortunately the whitelist only allows 10 numbers. They have a blacklist system too and both can be active. Now I only ever get calls from people I know. Occasionally I have to turn it off because I am expecting some commercial oriented call and that's when I am reminded about why I use whitelisting 100% of the time. Cell providers should have the same system. Whitelisting and blacklisting should be standard features in the modern world.

Nice try, but enforcement is key.

[Sponge Bath]

I get robocalls from companies I have no business relation with on my mobile phone, which is also on the do not call list. This is currently illegal. When this happens, I dutifully fill out the forms on the FCC complaint site, with all the details. Afterward I am sent a snail mail letter acknowledging the form. Rinse and repeat, but no changes. I still get robocalls from the same number as the complaint. I'm talking 20 or 30 of complaints over six months.

So this new "tougher" rule is supposed to do what exactly? Nobody is enforcing the existing rules, why make new rules? For good PR, I guess.

Re:Text messaging

[swalve]

SMS doesn't work that way.

Re:Text messaging

[HybridJeff]

That depends, if the message is comign from a SMS short code rather than a normal phone number then the carrier could remove the sender in question from their short code program if they sending out spam or fraudulently signing peopel up for premium services. I'm not saying that they necesicarily will, but they do have that ability.