"lrjgrrrr": No offense, because I share your sense of moral outrage at all these spam-calls, but the 'response' you describe sounds to me like the vindictive behavior of a twelve year old child, not an adult.

(N.B.: if you *are* twelve or younger, then you're normal, but if you're an adult, then we need to have this little talk...)

Consider that, by screaming into the phone, you're just being cruel to someone who (without a doubt) would be doing *any* other job (if they had the opportunity). I'm sure you don't appreciate people screaming at you, so why would someone else not be hurt by a scream from you?

Ask yourself this: how are YOU making the world BETTER by terrorizing these unfortunate telemarketing call-center wage-slaves? These are people, "lrjgrrrr", usually with little or no education, who are already forced (yes, forced) by socio-economic circumstances to work for the creeps and criminals who run these phone-spam-scams. They have families, probably like you do, and they have to go home after hours of soul-crushing work, change diapers, put elderly parents to bed and pay their bills (if they can, on the 'commissions' the scammers pay them to be abused by screamers). Just like you, they sleep, eat, cry, defecate, sit in traffic, read the news and yearn for something better. Nobody, least of all me, is excusing the sleazebags they work for, but why scream at the teenaged girl workign the register at McDonalds just because that corporation abuses the rights of South American cowhands or fattens young Kentuckians to be cannon-fodder in the next multinational oil company war in the Middle East?

And are you so completely noble and honorable a being that some higher authority has (s)elected you to be their Nemesis? Do these sorry folks, sitting there, headphones on and staring at an unblinking computer screen like they're characters in some demented Orwellian nightmare, need YOU to add to their suffering, when all you need to do is ignore them?

Where is your compassion for these sad, desperate human beings? Can't you see that they're already MUCH worse off than even you -- the person who is being 'inconvenienced' for a few seconds by the robocaller that's already orchestrating their own private hell?

Seriously: do you think it's your right to abuse other people just because you've been momentarily inconvenienced? Would you also pull over to assault a guy putting up ugly billboards by the roadside -- just because his boss pays him minimum wage for erecting eyesores that obstruct your sight-lines for a few seconds as you drive by? Really?

I hope your attitude can evolve over time, that you can breathe deeply the air of the Land of the Free, and learn to treat others --no matter how they might 'annoy' you'-- with the basic respect they deserve as human beings. Of course, I also hope that someone rational finally figures out (perhaps by technical means, if not by legislation or regulation) how to make such scams vanish from our telecommunications landscape. I urge you, "lrjgrrrr" to behave in a more mature way by developing real Compassion: start by just not answering these calls, and if you do, put yourself in the position of the unlucky drone tasked with dealing with a long line of irate 'customers', 99% of whom want nothing the people behind the scam are 'selling'. Be nice. Ask how their day is going. Ask if they have kids, and how their kids are doing in school. Ask how *they* react when *they* get these same types of calls (you might be surprised at the creativity of their answers as I know I have been).

Remember: your telephone is there for *your* convenience, not for the convenience of others: you have a telephone so that the people you want to hear from can contact you, and so that you can contact them. If some 'phoney' is abusing it, that's on their karma, not on yours (unless you turn it into a negative for yourself by abusing another human being). Learn to use your phone like a responsible adult and not as a weapon against others caught in the same System we all abhor for its inhumanity. If we act like petulant children, we'll just invite more of the same, but if we evolve, the world will make progress with us. *Be* the change you want to see: model the kindness and humanity with which you yourself would prefer to be treated, even with those who call you at dinnertime. I seem to remember a fellow who suggested similar behavior about 2,000 years ago: it sounds to me like you'd do well to re-read that old 'Golden Rule'.

Don't get me wrong: I detest these incessant calls as much as anyone, but I also know that the technology for dealing with them, bolstered by useful sites like this one, is very simple to master... just don't answer the phone! Or, if you do, don't say a word: remain silent and wait for the calling party to speak... if you don't hear anything for 10+ seconds, simply hang up. The scammers' computer-controlled dialing systems will eventually decide that you're a fax machine and stop calling.

If you want to get 'fancy' like I have, you can also call the weasels who run your telephone company (who have, IMHO, an abiding interest in the continued existence of these scammers -- the same way the 'anti-virus' software companies have ties to 'computer virus' authors) and pay them a few extra bucks a month for a 'privacy manager' service. Then you can easily block calls from specific numbers. I find that, after the scammers' computer-driven dialling systems hit that brick wall a few times, they go away pretty quickly. I have never subscribed to the 'Do Not Call' list because I consider that to be only slightly more trustworthy than the scammers themselves. And, while I get a handful of these calls every month, I find that my own personal "don't take calls from these numbers" mechanism is at least as effective as the centralized governmental approach, which would require me to provide my 'personally identifiable info' to yet another Unknown Entity which might someday have that information stolen from it (given what I know about computer security after decades in Silly-con Valley).

BTW, I find it incredibly ironic that everyone is so incensed by these telemarketing scams while their own elected government's communications surveillance is SO deeply intrusive, pervasive and unconstitutional. If we as citizens put a fraction of this energy into finally unplugging the NSA's massive wiretap operations and restoring some integrity to the telecommunications networks we were once justifiably proud to have invented, we might discover what "The Land of the Free" really means. But, I digress. This is mainly about being compassionate to others.

To summarize, for what it's worth, I'd say this to you, "lrjgrrrr": please take responsibility for your own privacy in a mature way, and in the process, always communicate (politely) with others (regardless of who they are) ju exactly as you'd have them communicate with you.

Finally, I'd like to express my thanks to whoever is running this website: I wish some of our tax dollars could support projects like this, instead of paying for more intrusive ways of profiling us all, since adding ourselves to a DNC database is exactly the same as adding ourselves to a database. The purposes of the people who 'own' those databases can change over time.

Well, that's just my $0.02. Live long and prosper.