There may be (depending on the mechanism used to acheive this) a good policy argument to be made that these shouldn't be governed by laws governing phone calls, but they are exactly the same arguments that would lead to the conclusion that they should be governed by laws concerning unsolicited commercial email.
Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
71–80 of 227 posts
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#72Seeing this and some of the other people who get spam calls (I get them too from time to time), I am wondering if they allow this legally, why not do something to make the effort of it not worth it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/
I am reminded of this, where the goal is to waste to telemarketers time as much as possible, and my thought is enough people used it, it would make spam calling not worth it.
I would gladly pay for a program in which I could load that up on my phone and have it distract/annoy them back.
Thoughts?
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#73> The Republican National Committee, which is in favor of ringless voice mail, goes as far as to argue that prohibiting direct-to-voice-mail messages may be a violation of free speech. Absurd. The right to free speech does not include forcing others to listen to you.
They are not forcing you to listen to anything. You can a) delete the message or b) change voicemail systems so this does not work. These problems can be mitigated from a technical perspective.
.. and why does that allow them to spam you? Just because you can avoid it by changing numbers? You could make that same argument for a restraining order -- "Oh you can just move, so why would we legally protect you?". Absurd.
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#74How does this even work? How can you not ring the phone and have a voicemail?
Permission from the carrier to dump an audio file directly into your voicemail box.
If that's the mechanism and this takes off, there'll be a strong incentive for one carrier to offer spam-free voice mail and either steal all the customers or cause the entire industry to fall in line.
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
>As a naive outsider, seems like it wouldn't take much to just connect those two calls. Who would you charge for the call?
All phones services I've used charge for total usage, regardless of the initiator. If someone calls me, I still get dinged for every minute I'm on the line, same as if I placed an outgoing call. (Granted, I've only used pay-as-you-go type services, so perhaps other services are different.)
In Europe all services I have seen has been of the kind where whoever makes the call pays, and nobody ever gets charged for receiving calls.
Under such a system, this can become a issue.
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#76> The Republican National Committee, which is in favor of ringless voice mail, goes as far as to argue that prohibiting direct-to-voice-mail messages may be a violation of free speech. Absurd. The right to free speech does not include forcing others to listen to you.
They are not forcing you to listen to anything. You can a) delete the message or b) change voicemail systems so this does not work. These problems can be mitigated from a technical perspective.
> change voicemail systems so this does not work
But if the GOP made prohibiting direct-to-voice-mail illegal you wouldn't be able to do that...
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#77In a way, this is a huge relief. I never listen to voice mails, so not having to be bothered by my phone ringing for something unimportant saves me a bit of time and anxiety.
Now I just have to worry about people I know, phone interviews, and debt collectors (who seem to be harassing me less often via phone these days).
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#78The article doesn't describe how the technology works. Due to the slow speed (100 voicemail/min) its likely what they are doing is initiating a call far enough for the phone system to busy out your phone, then very quickly placing a second call that the phone system sends straight to voicemail as your phone is busy. Once this call starts to hit voicemail, the original call is dropped. I doubt phone companies let peop…
That's exactly how it works. While I was at Twilio, we figured out how to do it - mostly from a customer abusing the system - and shut them down at the time. The problem was that it wasn't complicated enough that it would take long for others to figure out.
The problem I noted at the time is that since we only charged for minutes during the call, the first call - which was dialed and immediately dropped - would never get a charge, only the second would.
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#79Anyone else in a situation where you're receiving robocalls ten times a day? Hard to believe, but I can show screenshots as proof. I just counted. It's four times per day, like clockwork. Then there are various other robocalls that come in every couple days. So sometimes it's 4 per day, sometimes it's up to 7. It's mildly annoying, but is there any other option than to just ignore it or keep blocking the endless new…
Be careful about leaking your phone number online, such as in whois data or other places. I started an LLC a few years ago and my god the number of spam calls I got, it was absolutely ludicrous (I still get them to this day, although it's now on the order of 2 a month)
Re: Ringless voice mails from telemarketers
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are not forcing you to listen to anything. You can a) delete the message or b) change voicemail systems so this does not work. These problems can be mitigated from a technical perspective.
.. and why does that allow them to spam you? Just because you can avoid it by changing numbers? You could make that same argument for a restraining order -- "Oh you can just move, so why would we legally protect you?". Absurd.
I think the problems with receiving a voicemail message and requiring a serious legal protection because you could be murdered or physically harmed by a specific person and not even close to the same order of magnitude.