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France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

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Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#261

Post by lightbendover »

elfly wrote: post #203
4bpp wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood what are the technical obstacles to building the phone network in such a way that caller numbers can not be spoofed or suppressed. Then, you could just build a system where receiving an unsolicited phone call from a commercial entity entitles you to a compensation in small claims court, to the tune of 50 EUR, unless the caller can prove that you explicitly authorised them.

It would work until you need to route an international call. And there's a lot of telemarketing and scams happening across country lines. I mean, they should still do it. It's just the first problem they'd face.

[dead]

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#262

Post by Telaneo »

jraph wrote: post #235
Telaneo wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think (not) acting against someone's will is a question of mere politeness. In social care, it's often considered mistreatment. The reason given by the person in question was politeness. I'm not talking about whether or it's polite to change this setting. > For instance if it is considered that an adult who's not autonomous can express consent and doesn't want to take their pills, social workers normally sh…

Ah, by "reason", you meant the grandmother's reason! Yeah, I don't think that's a good reason neither. Now, it not being a good reason is not a pass to act against her will either. I think OP needs to convince her that it's a bad reason first. > That's because 'I want to die' is a valid reason. Or at least it should be That's a very reasonable reason not to want to take a pill, but that's not even necessarily the act…

> Often the reason is completely unknown. Possibly the person refusing the pills doesn't really know why they are refusing it / doesn't even have good reasons. The actual reasons behind the refusal doesn't theoretically matter much in whether they should be forced to take the pills. They should only matter to convince them that they should take the pill for their own good. (the reality is probably more "dirty" than that though)

Given that they're working of incomplete information or in otherwise difficult situations, it's understandable why they've taken the shortcut to 'just don't work against autonomy'. The reality that they're taking another shortcut through dirtier solutions doesn't surprise me.

> * society at large acting against autonomy isn't necessarily a good thing / a good justification for doing it. Society at large needs a fix.

Society definitely needs a fix in this area, but I'm unsure whether or not it's viable or even reasonable to expect complete autonomy (or even as complete as one can imagine until it starts bumping into other rights or major problems. Compare freedom of speech). It's probably something worth thinking about.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#263

Post by TeMPOraL »

alistairSH wrote: post #188
joenot443 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a similar list in America [1] and Canada [2]. Unfortunately, like any regulation, its efficacy is only as good as its enforcement, so my understanding is they're both routinely ignored. Particularly grim for the Canadian case - > In January 2009, numerous media and consumer advocacy organizations reported that anyone can use false information pretending to be a telemarketer and download a set of numbers from…

From what I can tell, many/most of my “telemarketing” calls are really scams. And the rest are political calls, which are exempt. This the most annoying, come election time, I get 5-6 texts or calls per day asking for money or votes.

> From what I can tell, many/most of my “telemarketing” calls are really scams.

Arguably they are the same thing by definition. The degree and intensity of the scam just varies a bit between well-known companies on one end, and the "kid had an accident" and tech support scams on the other.

Annoyingly enough, first-party scams (i.e. your own phone operator trying to dupe you into something) are somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. So are political calls you mention.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#264

Post by jraph »

Telaneo wrote: post #262
jraph wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, by "reason", you meant the grandmother's reason! Yeah, I don't think that's a good reason neither. Now, it not being a good reason is not a pass to act against her will either. I think OP needs to convince her that it's a bad reason first. > That's because 'I want to die' is a valid reason. Or at least it should be That's a very reasonable reason not to want to take a pill, but that's not even necessarily the act…

> Often the reason is completely unknown. Possibly the person refusing the pills doesn't really know why they are refusing it / doesn't even have good reasons. The actual reasons behind the refusal doesn't theoretically matter much in whether they should be forced to take the pills. They should only matter to convince them that they should take the pill for their own good. (the reality is probably more "dirty" than t…

Thanks for the interesting discussion!

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#265

Post by brushfoot »

"Cold calls annoy me" is one angle, and from that perspective, sure.

But "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is another angle. Because giant corporations may not need to make cold calls. It's the small bootstrapped startup that does.

Hopefully lawmakers will include provisions for small businesses making well-researched calls. Because otherwise, this is just one more way of pulling up the ladder.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#266

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

Frieren wrote: post #246
inigyou wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that it's a network. The hard part of networking isn't the technology - it's the other people. And short of a government regulation or a monopoly, they'll never all agree. STIR/SHAKEN has an exception for calls passing through TDM trunks, which don't support it. This created a small industry for passing spam calls through TDM trunks. Such calls can trivially have their caller ID spoofed.

> short of a government regulation or a monopoly, Phone companies used to be monopolies, in Europe they were owned by the government as a public service. But when they become profitable politicians betrayed their citizens and sold them. Nowadays, phone companies are a source of scams, spam and everything wrong with big corporations. And all that profits are now private instead of helping to fund the country.

On this topic, phone lines are so ubiquitous that it is irresponsible for representative governments to continue to let private companies mess around with them. Doubly irresponsible to go from public to private after the increase in popularity.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#267

Post by jayknight »

elromulous wrote: post #192
embedding-shape wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain we have something called "Lista Robinson" (in Sweden exists something similar, called "NIX-registret") which are basically opt-in lists where you can enter your phone number, then once the new lists been distributed, the telemarketing companies cannot call you, if they're doing things properly. If they call anyway, you just mention you're on the list, they hang up, and remove your number from the list they h…

We have a "do not call" list in the us. It's effectively worthless.

I have had some success in just asking the spam callers to remove me from their list. I still get a fair number of calls, but they are mostly blocked by Google's filter (though they do get sent to voicemail, which results in lots of 4 second silent messages).

The last few weeks it's been spammy text messages from politicians, though.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#268

Post by pmontra »

derfurth wrote: post #215
embedding-shape wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain we have something called "Lista Robinson" (in Sweden exists something similar, called "NIX-registret") which are basically opt-in lists where you can enter your phone number, then once the new lists been distributed, the telemarketing companies cannot call you, if they're doing things properly. If they call anyway, you just mention you're on the list, they hang up, and remove your number from the list they h…

It was the case in France too, it was called Bloctel; you just had to register your phone number and telemarketing companies had a legal obligation to look it up and not call you. So it worked for a time, legit companies stoped calling; however most people didn't knew about Bloctel as it was little advertised. Meanwhile, spam calls turned into scam calls, and a real issue especially with the elderly. So I think that…

We have that kind of list in Italy too. I registered my number and I keep getting calls, so I stopped answering to numbers not in my contacts list. If I know that somebody will be calling me, I ask for the number and I add it to the list.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#269

Post by bluebarbet »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #257
embedding-shape wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Spain we have something called "Lista Robinson" (in Sweden exists something similar, called "NIX-registret") which are basically opt-in lists where you can enter your phone number, then once the new lists been distributed, the telemarketing companies cannot call you, if they're doing things properly. If they call anyway, you just mention you're on the list, they hang up, and remove your number from the list they h…

For all these countries that don’t get scam calls, it has nothing to do with your do not call list since these are criminals anyway. It has to do with the fact that Americans are Legion and have a lot of money.

>Americans are Legion and have a lot of money

And perhaps also (unironically) more persuadable due to the rampant commercialism and historic openness (to ideas, strangers, everything) of their society.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#270

Post by inigyou »

bonzini wrote: post #236
inigyou wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. International calls pay a dollar a minute. If telemarketers had to pay that they'd be out of business.

International calls pay whatever the caller network wants them to pay. You're assuming that the caller network isn't part of the scam.

Incorrect, it's the callee network
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