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banning phone soliciting

#1
Carol Offline
Is there any reason why we should not make a law banning phone soliciting?  Please, do not tell me of the "do not call list".  That is completely ineffective, and I know I am not alone in not wanting solicitors to call me.  The problem is much worse than being annoyed.  It is also being scammed.  

Any law that prevents phone soliciting needs teeth to prevent using the phone for scamming people.  With all the information gathering that goes on, I find it hard to believe it is not possible to identify phone scammers and prosecute them. 

By allowing people to take advantage us we have created an ideal environment for wrong doers, while at the same time we are destroying our social bonds by creating an environment of constant distrust.  Is there any reason for not fighting back and creating laws that give us better protection?

I bit on this phone scam and now I am warning you. check it out for yourself.

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/03...port-scams
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#2
Syne Offline
This is one of the myriad uses for critical thinking. Restricting solicitation is also a restriction on free speech. Luckily, you also have the freedom of association, which means you don't have to answer those calls.

Any law that truly prevents scammers will also prevent political, charity, and polling solicitation, as well as legit service/product offers. So you're pretty much asking the government to make sure anyone who doesn't know you doesn't call you...when you could just refrain from answering unknown numbers. That is what voicemail was invented for. Use just an ounce of personal will and responsibility.

Or are people nowadays just conditioned, like Pavlov's dog, to answer any ringing phone by involuntary response?
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#3
C C Offline
(Nov 16, 2016 06:17 PM)Carol Wrote: Please, do not tell me of the "do not call list".


Yeah, that's been an amusing offering of ".gov" for well more than a decade. The nuisance calls actually seem to increase afterwards, as if the list is routinely shopped around to overseas scams and regularly updated.
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#4
Carol Offline
(Nov 16, 2016 09:52 PM)Syne Wrote: This is one of the myriad uses for critical thinking. Restricting solicitation is also a restriction on free speech. Luckily, you also have the freedom of association, which means you don't have to answer those calls.

Any law that truly prevents scammers will also prevent political, charity, and polling solicitation, as well as legit service/product offers. So you're pretty much asking the government to make sure anyone who doesn't know you doesn't call you...when you could just refrain from answering unknown numbers. That is what voicemail was invented for. Use just an ounce of personal will and responsibility.

Or are people nowadays just conditioned, like Pavlov's dog, to answer any ringing phone by involuntary response?

I don't think strangers have a right to use my private phone in my private home for their freedom of speech.  I seriously don't think an invasion of anyone's privacy has anything to do with freedom of speech.  I think our privacy is very important and I would like a couple of laws turned back around, so our privacy is as protected today as it was when our constitution was written.

(Nov 17, 2016 10:35 PM)C C Wrote:
(Nov 16, 2016 06:17 PM)Carol Wrote: Please, do not tell me of the "do not call list".


Yeah, that's been an amusing offering of ".gov" for well more than a decade. The nuisance calls actually seem to increase afterwards, as if the list is routinely shopped around to overseas scams and regularly updated.

Thank you for that confirmation of what appears to our reality.  And thank you for bringing up these calls often come from overseas and most certainly do not have our best interest in mind.
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#5
Syne Offline
(Nov 27, 2016 12:12 AM)Carol Wrote:
(Nov 16, 2016 09:52 PM)Syne Wrote: This is one of the myriad uses for critical thinking. Restricting solicitation is also a restriction on free speech. Luckily, you also have the freedom of association, which means you don't have to answer those calls.

Any law that truly prevents scammers will also prevent political, charity, and polling solicitation, as well as legit service/product offers. So you're pretty much asking the government to make sure anyone who doesn't know you doesn't call you...when you could just refrain from answering unknown numbers. That is what voicemail was invented for. Use just an ounce of personal will and responsibility.

Or are people nowadays just conditioned, like Pavlov's dog, to answer any ringing phone by involuntary response?

I don't think strangers have a right to use my private phone in my private home for their freedom of speech.  I seriously don't think an invasion of anyone's privacy has anything to do with freedom of speech.  I think our privacy is very important and I would like a couple of laws turned back around, so our privacy is as protected today as it was when our constitution was written.

Your privacy is only invaded by your choice, to answer the call. The ringing phone is only a request for your attention...a request that you must take action to accept. It's the same as choosing to answer your door. Would you also want laws to keep people you don't know from knocking on your door?
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#6
stryder Offline
It's like the laws passed to try and reduce spam had those that operate mailing lists require an "Opt-out" link to be applied. All that ended up doing is creating a method of abuse to phish for live accounts, after all if something is blatantly spam worthy and a person responds with their due diligence and clicks the opt-out they literally identify there is a human at the end of the rainbow (array).

The simplest answer is Whitelisting, only accept calls from those you've specifically deemed acceptable and block absolutely everything else. It's then just working out a way to apply a whitelist, it shouldn't be automatic acceptance since that would result in abuse and if you had a method where people "friends request" you, your still going to have the problem of solicitation to some extent.

Perhaps a simpler form similar to how PGP uses cryptokey pairing, where those that are accepted automatically must have a copy of the private key that has been assigned to them. (It wouldn't take much to add such things to a phones wrapper (packet phrasing) nowadays since we don't use analogue anymore.

Of course the simplest and most effective way (Which I happen to use) is not have a phone at all, this can of course cause problems however since there is currently no law forcing companies to curtain to people without phones (there's a lot of things that I can't do online without a phone number to assign to it) Luckily I was able to use a families company "Hotline" to aid with such things, the phone number they use is actually a special forwarding one that charges extra to anyone calling it, so if someone is going to solicit, they are going to be paying the phone bill for them.
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#7
Carol Offline
Really that is the best we can do?  The Hotline phone sounds the best.  Hey, does that phone have a message alerting the caller that s/he will be charged?   I could put that message on my answering machine and tell everyone I know, it is a false message.  But does that stop automatic callers?  

Some of my friends don't answer their phones until they hear the message someone is leaving.  I don't have caller ID so I can't see who is calling.  I do have the old plug-in the wall phone.   Big Grin  These phones don't get lost.  My problem is I hate ringing phones...hum Idea perhaps if I changed the sound of the ring, it would be easier to ignore.
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#8
stryder Offline
The problem with automated callers is the programming used to create them. I don't know exactly what programming is used, however if I'd been one of those diabolical types that had gone about creating them the code would of been quite simple.
  • Phone a number from a list.
  • If the phone picks up, play the message to the end and mark it as complete
  • If the phone doesn't pick up, try again later (skip current entry in list and try again in 24hours)
  • If the phone cuts off before the end of message, try again in 24hrs.

This suggest that if you don't listen to the message and hang up, it will automatically persist until you've actually listened to it.

The only conclusion there is when one of them rings up, stick your phone off the hook for a couple of minutes while you do something else, then you can guarantee that the automation identifies that the message was received.
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#9
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Nov 16, 2016 06:17 PM)Carol Wrote: Is there any reason why we should not make a law banning phone soliciting?  Please, do not tell me of the "do not call list".  That is completely ineffective, and I know I am not alone in not wanting solicitors to call me.  The problem is much worse than being annoyed.  It is also being scammed.  

Any law that prevents phone soliciting needs teeth to prevent using the phone for scamming people.  With all the information gathering that goes on, I find it hard to believe it is not possible to identify phone scammers and prosecute them. 

By allowing people to take advantage us we have created an ideal environment for wrong doers, while at the same time we are destroying our social bonds by creating an environment of constant distrust.  Is there any reason for not fighting back and creating laws that give us better protection?

I bit on this phone scam and now I am warning you.  check it out for yourself

I usually wait until the phone's picked up at the caller's end then I tell them I'm not interested. I'm creating a repetitive habit so that when I'm older there's less chance of me being scammed. IOW the callers help me to learn to ignore them.  Some get real ticked off when I say 'not interested' and one guy threatened to kill me one night, all the way from India. I just laughed and invited him over.
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#10
Carol Offline
(Dec 1, 2016 11:47 PM)stryder Wrote: The problem with automated callers is the programming used to create them.  I don't know exactly what programming is used, however if I'd been one of those diabolical types that had gone about creating them the code would of been quite simple.
  • Phone a number from a list.
  • If the phone picks up, play the message to the end and mark it as complete
  • If the phone doesn't pick up, try again later (skip current entry in list and try again in 24hours)
  • If the phone cuts off before the end of message, try again in 24hrs.

This suggest that if you don't listen to the message and hang up, it will automatically persist until you've actually listened to it.

The only conclusion there is when one of them rings up, stick your phone off the hook for a couple of minutes while you do something else, then you can guarantee that the automation identifies that the message was received.
 
Okay I will try that.

(Dec 2, 2016 03:06 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: I usually wait until the phone's picked up at the caller's end then I tell them I'm not interested. I'm creating a repetitive habit so that when I'm older there's less chance of me being scammed. IOW the callers help me to learn to ignore them.  Some get real ticked off when I say 'not interested' and one guy threatened to kill me one night, all the way from India. I just laughed and invited him over.

Ah you give me an idea.  Answer in Chinese.  

I am older, and my rule for avoiding scams is,  "don't take something for nothing".  I broke the rule and got scammed, but realized things were going wrong and didn't let things get worse.  I guess I needed reinforcement that my rule is a good one.

Usually, I am not in favor of regulating things with laws, but when it comes to phone soliciting I want to outlaw it for at least 6 months. Send a message to them all that if the system is abused, it will be shut down.
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