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France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

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Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries have these no call lists but they are fairly useless as there is no enforcement. I've even heard stories of some scammers exclusively using such lists, as they are pre-verified!

> Most countries have these no call lists but they are fairly useless as there is no enforcement What country are you in that it doesn't work in? I know for a fact it works in Spain and Sweden, but it'll really depend on the country. You'd help by others by being a bit more explicit :) > I've even heard stories of some scammers exclusively using such lists, as they are pre-verified! That does suck and seems counter-p…

In Canada that list is used by foreign telemarketers to spam us. Our enforcement authorities just shrug and say the criminals are not in our jurisdiction. That being said, my phone is pretty good at stopping it.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#282

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 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…

The US and Canada also already have an outright ban on auto dialing and telemarketing calls to cellphones.

There are exceptions for nonprofits, political campaigns and surveys and to be honest those do seem to be the nature of all the non-scam unsolicited calls I receive (and of course they are somewhat difficult to distinguish from scams anyway), based on the voicemails they sometimes leave, so it may well actually be working.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#283

This is a great move by France, but most of the rest of the world does not suffer from the telemarketing scam hell that Americans do. I am a US citizen living overseas. I have a US cell number that is only used for 2FA for US financial institutions. No one else has that number. I get more scam calls every day on that number than I do in a year on my local number. It's crazy. Most of the world has solved the worst of…

I live in the U.S., have a U.S. phone number, and get maybe one spam call every six months. (Spam texts about once a month, with the exception of before elections, when it’s more.) I wonder what causes the difference. Do I have a newer phone number that isn’t on as many lists? Or is my carrier filtering calls before they get to my phone?

I briefly activated a second SIM on an MVNO that gave me a new number, and that one previously belonged to an old woman who got spam calls roughly every ten minutes. Clearly there is an issue here, but it doesn’t affect everyone equally.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#284
post #57
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There doesn't need to be any kind of technical solution. If a telemarketer wants to sell something, they must declare the name of their company. The company name can be reported to police (or whatever authorities are going to handle this) who can then fine the telemarketers.

What if the business says 'That wasn't me?' I mean, everyone can call anyone and name any company already.

Here in Denmark there is no block list, but you have to explicitly opt-in to receiving telemarketing calls. By default, it's illegal to call you.

I never opt-in to anything. If I do get a call, I usually ask for the callers employee name and employee ID, their supervisors name and employee ID and the name of the company. Then I point out that it is illegal to call me and ask for them to get my name off their list.

It's been years since I've gotten any sort of telemarketing or survey call.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#285

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…

> anyone can use false information pretending to be a telemarketer I suppose many people would wonder what the difference is between a legitimate caller you don't want and a fake one.

From context they mean pretending to be a legitimate law-abiding telemarketer who plans to use the do not call list for screening purposes when in fact they are an overseas telemarketer who plans to use the list as a cheap set of known working phone numbers.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#286
In the US, effectively 100% of the calls are criminals and scammers.

I really don't understand. Isn't the government listening to all the phone calls? Wasn't that the disclosure like 2 decades ago.

The very first time someone tries that dumb Yahoo security scam, the number should be automatically disconnected. I really don't get it

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#287
post #11

Great idea! Telemarketers have ruined the phone network for me. I haven't answered an unknown call for the past 10 years, which sometimes means I miss important ones. 99.9% of all calls are an attempt to get money, and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage. A ban is the right idea but I wonder how they can handle it, logistically. I think there needs…

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…

I need this. I've had bloody Freshworks calling me every single day for the past month, even though I ask them to remove me from their list every time. It doesn't matter if I ask nicely, whether I listen to their pitch or don't, whether I make threats, they still call.

I will never, ever, work with Freshworks, Freshdesk, Freshservice, or any of their other products as a direct result of this.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#288
post #11

Great idea! Telemarketers have ruined the phone network for me. I haven't answered an unknown call for the past 10 years, which sometimes means I miss important ones. 99.9% of all calls are an attempt to get money, and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage. A ban is the right idea but I wonder how they can handle it, logistically. I think there needs…

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…

Same in the Netherlands, but it's not enforced. Although, it could be so easily enforced, at least for dutch numbers.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#289

In the US, effectively 100% of the calls are criminals and scammers. I really don't understand. Isn't the government listening to all the phone calls? Wasn't that the disclosure like 2 decades ago. The very first time someone tries that dumb Yahoo security scam, the number should be automatically disconnected. I really don't get it

What benefits would the government (not the people) get from shutting down scammers? Scammers still pay taxes, and companies like Amazon that benefit from revenue obtained by scammers are major donors.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't listen, out on the streets and protest. Protests have never once seemed effective my entire life, honestly

> Protests have never once seemed effective my entire life, honestly Then time to crack open those dusty history books and start reading mate :) Most of the civil rights we have in modern life comes from either protests or protests evolving into riots or protests evolving into riots evolving into civil wars, one way or another. But it always starts with protests. You might still be young and haven't yet experienced i…

You might want to cite something, rather than do this.

Everybody seems to pretend to be black Americans, whose freedoms weren't gained simply by protest, but by being beaten and having dogs sicced on them while protesting before cameras, and the shame that white people felt while watching that on television - and the pressure of "whataboutism" coming from the Russians that the USA was being judgemental about freedom while also being an apartheid state.

Other people have aped the black civil rights struggle (deemed the "civil rights" struggle), and it has amounted to middle class people walking in the streets, congratulating each other and socializing. I don't know of any accomplishments resulting from that.

Street protests were traditionally a show of force; an indication that an overwhelming number of people were on the edge of violence. They often ended in a lynching, or the burning down of a building. Black people did not have that option, so they just offered their bodies to television cameras - this was not traditional, this was new. The only model they had before that was Gandhi, and that was not a traditional Indian thing as many think, but an idea he took from Tolstoy.

Time to crack open a history book and find out why Baltimore was called Mobtown.

Walking in the street has never done anything.

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