3 ms·

In the US isn't there a law expressly prohibiting these calls to cell phones?

by dhimes 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago
Yes. But scammers don't care. It does actually work to ask to be put on the do not call list maintained by the caller (not the national registry), even for scammers. Nobody wants to waste resources.
throwaway91111 10y ago
Yes, but a number of difficulties remain: 1) there's little way of figureing out who is actually contacting you. 2) If you file the number with the FCC you don't get a response. 3) it's not always obvious there's a commercial entity on the other side. I've gotten a number of calls that appear to try and keep me on the line while preventing from Turing test esque conversation from taking place. 4) some of the spam is legal--technically they aren't for profit, but they serve as a funnel for commercial services. These have been the most persistent with me.
- pfarnsworth 10y ago
  For #3, I no longer answer the phone with "Hello" from an unknown number. I wait for the person to say "Hello?" or if the person starts talking I just hang up.
  - groby_b 10y ago
    All unknown numbers go to voicemail. Spammers inevitably leave 2-3 seconds of silence, so I just ban based on message duration. Usually, I report about 5-10 numbers a day.
    - ChoGGi 10y ago
      I used to do phone surveys, that silence is the system connecting you to a human (or your answering machine).
      - groby_b 10y ago
        Phone surveys are spam, as far as I'm concerned. And since they hang up when reaching my machine - definitely spam.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  We need a service that will collect complaints, sue on our behalf and send a check, taking their cut. Have an app that allows you to report a phone call quickly, automatically recording and uploading the entire call (it should record all calls and delete recordings after a few hours if not reported). Then for numbers that have been reported by multiple people, have someone investigate, and if the source is located, file lawsuits. It's $500 per violation, so if there's enough people lawsuits can work, and the company making the app can reduce investigation costs by distributing it among many different complainers (so even if a private investigator costs several thousand to get contact info, if they called 100 people and they end up getting a 50k judgement it works out).
OliverJones 10y ago
Yes. It's a federal criminal law. That means you have to get federal attorneys' offices interested if you want the miscreants stopped. But shutting down telemarketers isn't nearly as much fun as driving people like Aaron Swartz to suicide, or as profitable as seizing airplanes from drug smugglers. So, effectively, this kind of thing is legal.

In the US isn't there a law expressly prohibiting these calls to cell phones?

by dhimes 10y ago

In the US isn't there a law expressly prohibiting these calls to cell phones?

Yes. But scammers don't care. It does actually work to ask to be put on the do not call list maintained by the caller (not the national registry), even for scammers. Nobody wants to waste resources.

throwaway91111 10y ago

Yes, but a number of difficulties remain: 1) there's little way of figureing out who is actually contacting you. 2) If you file the number with the FCC you don't get a response. 3) it's not always obvious there's a commercial entity on the other side. I've gotten a number of calls that appear to try and keep me on the line while preventing from Turing test esque conversation from taking place. 4) some of the spam is legal--technically they aren't for profit, but they serve as a funnel for commercial services. These have been the most persistent with me.

pfarnsworth 10y ago
For #3, I no longer answer the phone with "Hello" from an unknown number. I wait for the person to say "Hello?" or if the person starts talking I just hang up.
- groby_b 10y ago
  All unknown numbers go to voicemail. Spammers inevitably leave 2-3 seconds of silence, so I just ban based on message duration. Usually, I report about 5-10 numbers a day.
  - ChoGGi 10y ago
    I used to do phone surveys, that silence is the system connecting you to a human (or your answering machine).
    - groby_b 10y ago
      Phone surveys are spam, as far as I'm concerned. And since they hang up when reaching my machine - definitely spam.
ikeboy 10y ago
We need a service that will collect complaints, sue on our behalf and send a check, taking their cut. Have an app that allows you to report a phone call quickly, automatically recording and uploading the entire call (it should record all calls and delete recordings after a few hours if not reported). Then for numbers that have been reported by multiple people, have someone investigate, and if the source is located, file lawsuits. It's $500 per violation, so if there's enough people lawsuits can work, and the company making the app can reduce investigation costs by distributing it among many different complainers (so even if a private investigator costs several thousand to get contact info, if they called 100 people and they end up getting a 50k judgement it works out).

OliverJones 10y ago

Yes. It's a federal criminal law. That means you have to get federal attorneys' offices interested if you want the miscreants stopped. But shutting down telemarketers isn't nearly as much fun as driving people like Aaron Swartz to suicide, or as profitable as seizing airplanes from drug smugglers. So, effectively, this kind of thing is legal.