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France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

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Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#341

Post by mh2266 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #200
elromulous wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That just sounds like you don't actually have a "do not call" list, you have something that is trying to be a "do not call" list ;) Speak with your local politicians to fix the issues that bothers you. They don't listen, out on the streets and protest. Same way civilians communicate with their governments in every other democracy :)

In the US, the local politicians are often the ones doing the spamming at this point. They've even specifically exempted themselves from the do not call laws, it's absurd.

They can also legally bypass "no soliciting" signs at people's homes.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#342

Post by cynicalpeace »

Scams are bad. But cold-calling selling a genuine B2B product is a beautiful right-of-passage for anyone doing sales.

Teaches you grit, rejection, tonality, relationship-building, and the elation of closing a sale all-in-one.

It's also one of the few outbound marketing channels that isn't yet swallowed up by Meta/Google, and can be done by any scrappy teenager.

Unpopular opinion here, I'm sure.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#344

Post by mh2266 »

vanviegen wrote: post #213
jareklupinski wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hospitals, doctors, and utility companies are the last ones i want to have direct contact to me :( they can continue to send me junk mail and unsolicited texts which already gets filed correctly friends and family only

I can imagine quite a few scenarios in which I prefer for those companies to be able to reach me.

Why? What situations do you need a doctor to use a synchronous, interrupting, unscheduled communication medium for, where the situation is not serious enough for you to already be in the hospital?

My doctors can communicate asynchronously through the MyChart app/website (the app is fairly terrible, I would rather them just use email, but oh well) where I can read and respond when it makes sense for me. Any test that they are running where the results could be bad is already asynchronous (or I am in the hospital) so delaying a few hours in reading it doesn't seem like a big deal even if it is something bad.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#345

Post by jimmydddd »

Kon5ole wrote: 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…

But how do you enforce this? It seems like most of the US spam calls originate from India. Do you have to get cooperation from Indian authorities? Seems unlikely since it's helping their economy? Do you put the burden on the phone company? I guess the phone companies make money from the calls, so they don't care?

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#346

Post by cge »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #263
alistairSH wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think the point is that there is a distinction between calls that are intrusive spam or arguably scams but not already illegal, and calls where the content of the call is itself unambiguously illegal.

Bans on unsolicited calls, or do-not-call lists, can be effective for the former, as it moves the behavior from being legal to being illegal, while for the latter, they are already breaking laws, often in a more severe way, and technical measures or enforcement are more important.

A phone company trying to trick someone into paying more per month for something they don't need is likely to be worried about being fined if caught calling a number on a do-not-call list. A scammer pretending to be the tax office and demanding payment of supposedly unpaid taxes is going to be in trouble if caught regardless of rules about what numbers can be called.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#347

Post by jimmydddd »

4bpp wrote: post #184
Kon5ole wrote: 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…

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.

I've seen two reasons. 1) Backward compatibility--you would have to add an additional security layer, and some old legacy switching hardware (5% of the network?) wouldn't support this. 2) Phone companies profit from the calls, so they have no incentive to spend the money to upgrade and stop it.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#348

Post by brabel »

embedding-shape wrote: post #166
Kon5ole wrote: 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…

Thanks for the information, I live in Sweden and get calls at least once a week, but it's annoying enough. I visited family in Brazil and was shocked about how people there seem to get unsolicited marketing calls every hour or so!! My mom was forced to change her number to stop them as she nearly got scammed of several thousand dollars - sometimes the scams are extremely convincing - in this case they knew she was at a certain bank agency and who she talked to, so clearly it had inside involvement. Also, now with AI-cloning voice services, it's almost impossible to tell if the person on the other side is really who you think it is. Answering calls from unknown numbers is an absolutely no-no. Even from known numbers, you've got to be careful.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#349

Post by Narishma »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #296

It's interesting that we all hate anonymous or spoofed calls over the phone but when it comes to the internet this is apparently the highest form of free protected speech. Why is this OK on one network but not another?

Not sure what you mean. The equivalent on the internet is probably spam and scam emails and they're also typically blocked by your email provider.
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