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France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

lemonde.fr

411–420 of 527 posts

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#411
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…

Surprised that it was “Robinson” in Spain as well as Denmark, I had to look it up.

Apparently that name is used in germany, netherlands, Belgium and more. It stems from Robinson Crusoe, which of course makes sense, as he was disconnected from the world :)

Personal take: it has no real effect, as especially foreign spam/scam callers have no insight or interest in looking up the list. Any ban is welcome!

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#412
Kudos to France. But the problem isn't telemarketing calls. It's the wholesale grab-fest of phone numbers from every.damn.nook.and.crany of the US soil. Hospitals, Car dealers, dentists, vets, brokerages, title offices... literally EVERY one of them is leaking YOUR information to everyone in the world.

within a week of closing a deal on my house i get a scam paper mail that almost looked legit asking me to pay $100 to get the title documents for my house. There aren't that many parties involved in the sale.. and its one of them (or all of them) broke the trust and bartered my information.

nearly all of them are uploading their contact list to meta and google.

THIS practice has to stop.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#413
post #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…

From what I can tell over time it seems to be random initial chance + random chance as your number gets shared with the 3rd parties you interact with. There are a few things one can do, like never pick up when it is a spam call, but at the end of the day there is still the element of chance to it.

I went a good 5+ years without spam calls/texts. Lately I've been getting the occasional scam recruitment text every 1-2 weeks for some reason. Hard to say why exactly, but hopefully it fades away and I get the peace again.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#414
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Social pressure, stigma and literally protest outside their workplace does wonders to get local politicians to remember who they actually work for :)

But requires grassroots organizing. Best day to start was yesterday, second-best day to start is today :)

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Right. What I'm saying is that the protests I've seen haven't been useful. I think it's either time to escalate or stop. > You might still be young I'm almost 40.

> Right. What I'm saying is that the protests I've seen haven't been useful. I think it's either time to escalate or stop.

Right, but just because the protests you've been to in your 40 years haven't worked in the way you wished, doesn't mean you think every single protest through all time also been unsuccessful in changing anything, right?

With that comes that protests can be successful, and the trick is to figure out why the protests you've gone to haven't been successful then, as they probably could have been, and then try to change it.

It's you, and many other people, but unless you all get together and do something, there will never be enough pressure for things to actually escalate. You cannot "stop then escalate", you put pressure until it escalates by itself. But the pressure thing is something that people need to actively participate in of course.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#416
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…

> and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage.

They do this to themselves if they don't leave a voicemail or can't bother to send a text. 99.9% of the scammers and spammers never do, so it's a good filter.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just block calls between France and Marocco" is a very racist proposal FYI there is at least 900k+ people in France either immigrant from Marocco or with an origin and a 100k+ people with french nationality or origin living in Marocco

Those people mostly use Whatsapp or similar at this point. Much cheaper and better quality.

Excuse me? What exactly do you mean by “those people??!” You’re on thin ice, buddy.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#418

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…

Surprised that it was “Robinson” in Spain as well as Denmark, I had to look it up. Apparently that name is used in germany, netherlands, Belgium and more. It stems from Robinson Crusoe, which of course makes sense, as he was disconnected from the world :) Personal take: it has no real effect, as especially foreign spam/scam callers have no insight or interest in looking up the list. Any ban is welcome!

> Surprised that it was “Robinson” in Spain as well as Denmark, I had to look it up.

Hah, I was similarly surprised, especially since in Sweden where I come from, it's called the "NIX-registry" for no rhyme or reason. At least Robinson makes sense to me :)

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just block calls between France and Marocco" is a very racist proposal FYI there is at least 900k+ people in France either immigrant from Marocco or with an origin and a 100k+ people with french nationality or origin living in Marocco

That's not racist it's simply a practical solution to spam calls coming from Morocco. It's completely irrelevant how many immigrants there are, they live in France now they can just dial out to Morocco and we ban inbound calls from Morocco.

Yes that's racist to divide one million families just the same of cruelty, and also quite stupid because that's not how capitalism work when there is a cheaper source of labor of a call center that speaks the right language in the right timezone, it will find its way.

But racism and stupidity are usually good friends, so that checks out.

Re: France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>I know for a fact it works in Spain and Sweden How do you know that a call that never reaches you was stopped by the no-call list as opposed to your number not being on the list of numbers to call today?

Me and others used to receive almost daily telemarketing calls. Once you enroll in the list and get the confirmation, you notice a drastic reduction in calls, and get maybe 2-3 per month. If you at that point start saying that you're on $NAME_OF_LIST to the companies who do still call, they say sorry, hang up, and you get less calls faster. This been the experience for 10+ people and myself who've used to get these calls, and no longer do.

The way the companies manage the lists, is basically that they have three types, they have huge unranked/unchecked lists of just numbers, one list of "good" numbers that are at least online, not on do-not-call lists, haven't recently been sold to already, and so on, then the group of blacklists essentially. Whenever the telemarketers work in their stations, the only numbers that even get dialed by the central robot for them, are the "good" numbers they've been assigned for their shift.

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