Hot in Phoenix wrote:
>I've decided that the Do Not Call Registry is a total waste.
You are wrong.
The Do Not Call registry stops thousands of law-abiding businesses from calling you. You just can't *count* calls you *don't* get.
Expecting the Do Not Call law to stop criminals from calling is like expecting a "No Trespassing" sign to prevent burglaries.
Many telemarketing and scam calls originate form overseas, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. laws.
And finally, one benefit of the Do Not Call Registry, even when it's violated, is that you no longer need to wonder if the call you get is legitimate: If they're calling, they're criminal.
Many of these calls are coming from Costa Rica and India and they are using spoofed (false) numbers, which in itself is illegal. They do cold calling for or sell the leads to numerous companies in this country and they all know that what they are doing is illegal. Tomorrow this same number may be selling Cruises, Timeshares or Security Systems but if you follow the money it usually ends up in the hands of an American LLC.
Most of the inbound robo call numbers are spoofed, as most of the bolierhouses, both off and on shore, are using Voip SIP Trunks services. Throwaway DID numbers are also used. Some of the robocalling is operated by the end use scammers directly. Others are contract services who earn a referral fee once you are transferred to the scammers.
The criminals behind this operation aren't going to pay attention to you asking to be removed from their list. Their calls cost them almost nothing and they make millions of them so they have no intention of ever removing someone. When you press a key to talk to them all that is accomplished is to verify that they have a working number.
Unfortunately blowing an air horn or whistle doesn't work either. Their headset have noise dampeners plus they are expecting it. However with that said if it makes you feel better then by all means give it a shot.
The banking system is also at fault here, without merchant accounts and ACH processing these criminals could not collect the scammed funds. Though the criminals use obfuscation, layered corporations, multiple bank accounts and offshore stashing, patterns of obvious fraudulent activity become apparent after a very short time.
This is an all out attack from these scum suckers! EVERYONE should be reporting them everywhere that they can. Since this is an obvious attempt at identity theft the FBI should be forced to get involved. (Prosecute them in criminal court instead of civil penalties).
If you want to stop these calls then you need to dry up their revenue source. Your phone company is charging you a fee for Caller ID. Your phone company pays the scammer for sending their Caller ID information. Your phone company pays only a fraction of a cent per call and you pay your phone company to have the Caller ID displayed. The scammers send out millions of calls which amounts to a significant amount of money however your phone company is charging a large amount to millions of customers. This may have something to do with the phone companies inability to stop these calls.
In order to stop this we need legislation making it illegal to charge for caller ID. If a phone service wishes to operate it would need to provide the Caller ID at no charge as part of the service. Here is the $50,000 solution that the FCC is looking for and it doesn't cost anything.
There is an excellent blog site that I found that explains how one company is getting away with this activity.
http://telemarketerspam.wordpress.com
I've decided that the Do Not Call Registry is a total waste.
I''ve started reporting all these calls to my congressman and senators. I explain I've been on the do not call list since it was created. But that the FCC and FTC are absolutely useless, which makes the do not call list useless and demand congressional action.
I think that if everyone who is posting on here does the same then maybe Congress will demand the FCC and FTC get off their collective butts and enforce the law.
Hot in Phoenix wrote:
>I've decided that the Do Not Call Registry is a total waste.
You are wrong.
The Do Not Call registry stops thousands of law-abiding businesses from calling you. You just can't *count* calls you *don't* get.
Expecting the Do Not Call law to stop criminals from calling is like expecting a "No Trespassing" sign to prevent burglaries.
Many telemarketing and scam calls originate form overseas, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. laws.
And finally, one benefit of the Do Not Call Registry, even when it's violated, is that you no longer need to wonder if the call you get is legitimate: If they're calling, they're criminal.
The one thing that I really dont understand is this: Why would anyone with a brain give their credit card numbers and other personal information to a stranger who calls you? How can you be so stupid? Do you think that because a stranger offers to lower your interest rate or offers a discount cruise for you that it is valid?
Would you give your credit card information to a stranger that stopped you on the street? Well, this is almost the same situation. Again, if you ask them to remove your phone from the list, I doubt that they can do this because the calls are computer controlled and I doubt they have either the desire or the ability to remove your name from the auto dialer. I think they can only add phone numbers if you are a possible "sucker" or piss them off.
These people are scammers, and they don't care about do not call lists. I pressed 1 to give them a hard time. Then I put their number on my cell phone blocked list. The next day I got about 20 calls from this number that my phone rejected. Some of these calls were other numbers on my reject list. So answering them either by pressing a number or talking to them is a very bad idea. It is the same as email spam. It shows that you read the spam or you listened to the full message.
The truth is, you personally may not have fallen for this particular scam, but maybe you will fall for another one, like a cruise scam. A friend of mine actually bought a cruise from a phone call. I am sure that she paid too much and got a bad deal, Another friend I worked with bought $5,000 in metal futures from a phone call and lost it all. His wife nearly divorced him. Out of thousands of calls, someone will bite. There are a lot of people that are easily fleeced or the scammers would not be in business .
Very informative article at the link you provided to us.
For all of the illegal robo calls, the Do Not Call lists are pointless. However, the registry is used by legitimate companies to "scrub" their telemarking lists. Too bad it doesn't apply to political action calls too. I'd love to stop those during election times. Also would like to stop the annoying survey calls. I think some of those are really just calls to verify your phone number is a working one so you can be called by all the scammers too.
Many more class action lawsuits need to be filed in every state, to get these companies shut down.