|
Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 04/18
/2007 |
|
|
Phone spammers, start your engines
– the government’s given you a green light.. I’m
sitting in my office this morning, trying to get going on a couple projects
as the morning is my most productive time, when my phone rings. In our
new electronic world of email and the internet, and after being in business
for 20 years for myself now, I know that when my phone rings it’s
probably somebody who doesn’t know me at all. All my clients and friends email me,. So when
my phone rings I always look at the caller ID, and if it’s blocked I
never answer, but if there’s a number and a Name of Unknown Caller I
usually answer it, as it might be somebody calling me about music or one of
my other many interests. And
I’m sure this has happened to all of you at times – I answer my
phone with my usual polite greeting, and there’s a pause – and
then a recording comes on with a robotic voice, and it’s a phone spammer trying to sell me
something which I would never buy from a phone spammer. This call was about a
special credit card service for people deeply in credit card debt. Now both
my personal and business phone numbers have been listed with the National Do
Not Call registry for years. To do
this for your own phones go to the Do Not Call Website
and you can register your phone numbers for free and give them your email
address for a confirmation email, and then within 30 days or something your numbers will
appear in a registry that all Phone solicitor companies are supposed to
respect and honor, and if they violate the rules they can be heavily fined. Sounds
great for a government program, but as usual it’s less filling. I’ll
usually go to an online lookup phone number directory service like www.switchboard.com
which lets you look up phone numbers for free, and in this case the phone
number I was looking up from this morning’s call 941-729-7201 comes
back with their standard message of Sorry, we couldn't find
anything for 941-729-7201. But from
some reason this call this morning and its arrogance disturbed me, so I went
to the DonotCall website to file a complaint
against this number. To my
utter amazement after I clicked on their Menu Selections to File a Complaint
and then I entered the offending number, I then received a message:
I could
not file my complaint because that number was registered just a few days ago
on their registry, and the company can call me for 31 days after the date
they register before they can get in trouble for phone spamming. So this
is a case of our Government giving phone spammers a license to phone spam for
31 days after they file their number with the National donotcall
registry, and we can’t complain about them, or get any
action taken against them. This
company bought a 900 #, and I can imagine huge banks
of robotic phone dialers calling millions of phones across the country with
their annoying robotic spamming phone message, and within 3 days they get to
the hinterlands and little old me here in Spo-Kane Warshington..... And guess
what – in 30 days this company will buy another 900 phone number, and
the phone spam game will start all over again. Alexander
Graham Bell, did you ever envision these problems? Come here, Mr. Watson, I
really need help ...... For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
|
