Feds Looking to Strengthen Telemarketing Sales Rule

My comment:

"I'd be more impressed if the original law had any teeth to it at all. Making the law tougher or revising it means nothing when we still get unwanted and false-ID calls day in and day out, especially when we report them and nothing is done.

I have virtually no faith in your power to stop these nuisances."

What about calls originating from overseas that mask (spoof) their phone numbers to appear as if the call is originating from within the U.S.?

Just being able to screen or block calls of overseas origin would be ideal.  

Nine out of ten junk calls my business receives appears to be from call centers in foreign countries, so enacting a law like this - though good, will still do nothing to stem the problem of calls originating from outside the United States.  What can be done about that?  There doesn't appear to be an readily available technology yet which will be able to discern true call origin.

Any new law that tightens the rules regarding telemarketing, fake bill collectors or internet fraud intended calls is alright with me. However, much more needs to be done!

Weird, I'm getting a:

"This Connection is Untrusted
You have asked Firefox to connect
securely to ftcpublic.commentworks.com, but we can't confirm that your connection is secure.
etc etc etc.."


When I try the link from here or from any other site with the news article.
Seems my Firefox doesn't like the site's certificate, but it doesn't know why :P

I just clicked through using Firefox - no problem with the certificate...

Hi Julia :)

I'll try it on my system at home tonight, it might be the company firewall on this end. This is what it says under Technical Details in the Firefox "Untrusted Connection" window:

"Technical Details

ftcpublic.commentworks.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)"


It's probably just something wrong on this end.
/shrug

Update for Julia,
Gonna blame this one on my company's firewall, as it's fine from home.

:)

And how many hundreds (or thousands) of FTC employees did it require to process these claims at the staggering rate of 2/ year?  Yeah, you get my drift.  And for my money, I'm betting that the "do not call" list is nothing more than a valuable commodity that the FTC can sell to the highest bidder among the major players in the telemarketing industry.

I can't say that the FTC is incompetent and lazy...b/c I'm not sure if it is that or totally corrupt.  Or maybe they meet the qualifications for all three.  I know that reporting offenders accomplishes nothing, and regardless of whether it is lack of interest, ability, or integrity, we could send them all packing and use the resources for a far greater benefit.

I ran 2 Charities for 5 years and used paid fundraisers we paid them 80% of evry dollar because we looked into phones, employees, costs of numbers and it was a skyrocket amount i wish the FTC would have a cap on how much Fundraisers could get its such a fine line. I found this out the hard way even though i was gettin a way below amount of  a salary and was giving 13 cents of evry dollar it wasnt enough! i told them the Fundraisers what they were gettin and they just say ok and went after me anyways, i will never ever run one again i understand they want it 80-89 to the stated cause i get that but when you have no name and are tryin to establish a name it takes time, the Salvation Army been around for over a 100 years, and etc

viruses are getting awful smart.  there's a wicked one that tells you you're infected then lists all your antivirus programs as "trojan horses" and deletes them.  it then starts sending info from your disk to some internet place.  

i immediately powered down by unplugging power cord (it also defeats your on-off button), unplugged dsl line, restarted and ran windows 7 full virus scan.  Virus scan full mode removed four trojans that quick mode had missed.  hope it's dead now.

i'd wager you have malware that is protecting some roomful of scammers under a slimy rock someplace.
Ohh for software to track phonecalls to a physical location!
You could name it "Rooster Cogburn" and it'd sell like hotcakes.

anyhow i am one of those who wont put credit or bank info on my computer. old jim

old jim

I get a call from 800-672-3012 several times a week, sometimes twice a day. I never answer and they never leave a msg. I'm on the do not call list, but it doesn't help....either beef it up or drop it.

Things are alot better than they were 5 or even 2 years ago.
We don't need any new laws...just enforce the ones we already have.

Requiring telephone and cell phone companies to provide 'call blocking' to all customers at no cost would be a huge benefit.
Verizon lets you block up to 5 numbers but not 'restricted' or 'unavailable' numbers.
Call blocking is a telemarketers worst enemy.

I believe the following rules would stop a lot of abuse:


1. Anyone allowed to inject calls into the FCC regulated US phone network must be either A) a subscriber technically restricted to using their own phone numbers as caller ID, this includes public phone booths etc. B) An FCC regulated phone company subject to these rules, and technically prevented from indicating caller IDs belonging to the receiving phone company, C) A foreign phone company regulated by the laws of one or more foreign countries and technically restricted to providing caller IDs indicating those same countries, D) An international long distance carrier who is legally bound to provided only truthful caller IDs and submits itself to FCC jurisdiction over complaints that it provided a false caller ID to a US phone company, E) An international, foreign or domestic phone company forwarding a roaming call from an a subscriber who has previously or simultaneously authenticated through or to that provider that they are using a device, calling card or other individual account issued to it by the phone company indicated by the caller ID, F) An identity on a non-phone network automatically encoded as a phone number in a traceable manner.  (Case E covers roaming cellphones, IP telephony, calling cards etc., case F covers IP telephony calls made directly to the recipient or the recipients phone company where only the originating IP address is known with certainty etc.)

2. Caller ID blocked calls originating in the FCC regulated US phone network must still be logged at the originating exchange, and each intermediary exchange before the call reaches its recipient or leaves the country must log enough information to trace the call to the log record at the previous exchange.  This information must be kept for 48 hours or until any formal complaints and subpoenas have been finally resolved or rejected, whichever is longer.  Weekends and national holidays are not included in the 48 hours.  If a request that would require the information is received, the "do not delete, legal request pending" message must be sent back through the chain of exchanges at a minimum speed of 1 hop/5 minutes.

3. Caller ID blocked calls originating outside the US must still include a truthful indication of the originating country and/or phone network.  Availability of specific caller identity behind such calls may or may not be available subject to the laws of said originating country.

4. Caller IDs used by telemarketers, pollsters and other frequent call originators must be listed in the official public reverse phone directories for its area code with the true name, address and legal identity of the originator.  A nickname or trademark may precede the true name in the listing, but cannot supplant it.

5. Violation of rule 4 or the ban on anonymous telemarketing calls carries a statutory fine for each call made with that caller ID or single-operator caller ID range if 10 or more unrelated recipients complain within a given calendar month (Thus if 100.000 calls are made from a call center owning the number sequence 1-(555)-555-51xx in March 2012, and those 100 numbers are not so listed in March 2012 and at least 10 different people complain about telemarketing from that number range in March 2012, then the call center and its backers are fined 100.000 times the fine for one bad call, with the 99.990 fines going straight to uncle Sam and the other 10 being shared with the 10 complainants).  This is meant both as a deterrent and as an incentive for the FCC to enforce such cases.

No wonder the USA is going broke. All these do nothing agencies! We can spend an entire day trying to report these calls to countless agencies w/ no results! While at the same time all Telemarketers are protected and nothing will shut them down!

I get dozens upon dozens of robocalls every week on my cell phone with spoofed phone #'s that look to be someone calling from my area--maybe made to look like it's a friend or relative??? They are calling looking for the previous owner of my cellphone & I believe they are debt collectors for Direct TV, from what I've researched.

The fact that the # is fake on the caller ID and that you can never speak to someone live, is insane. Each time they call, I have to check my voicemail, which costs me minutes I should be able to be reimbursed for.

There is a recording, and at the end, where you are told to call 'Mary Jones" at
Nationwide Credit
800-205-2240

These are some of the #'s they have "spoofed" and the # of times each # has called my cell just since November:

910-816-0615 - 42x
910-816-0640 - 41x
910-816-0646 - 39x

These must be new #'s they've started to use, but it's the same recorded message:
910-816-4693 -  2x in January
910-816-4694 -  1x in January

Here are several numbers that have called using pre-recorded messages about reducing your credit card rate. They do not care about the do not call list:

701-625-5008
414-526-8862
406-224-9051
203-584-5201

All of these calls have the very same message recorded. I am sure there will be more numbers to follow. What's weird is that some of the calls are from cell phones. But in any event the calls are illegal. But they won't stop until they are FORCED to stop.