First Caller-ID Spoofers Punished 156
coondoggie plugs a NetworkWorld story that begins, "The first telemarketers charged with transmitting false Caller IDs ... to consumers were fined and barred from continuing their schemes by a New Jersey District Court judge.... [T]wo individuals and one corporate defendant have been barred from violating the agency's Telemarketing Sales Rule and its Do Not Call requirements ... They were also found liable for $530,000 in damages ... [T]he case was the first brought by the Commission alleging the transmission of phony caller ID information or none at all."
I hope that this set precedent... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://what-is-what.com/what_is/spam.html [what-is-what.com]
Re:I hope that this set precedent... (Score:5, Funny)
Print one of these out and keep it by the phone:
Anti-Telemarketing Script [xs4all.nl]
Anti-Telemarketing Script [ucan.org]
Anti-Telemarketing Script [junkbusters.com]
Re:I hope that this set precedent... (Score:4, Funny)
The things Telemarketers hate most is wasting their time. What is probably more mean, is to pretend to be interested and ask ton's of questions about whatever they are selling. Go along and act like your going ot buy everything they have to sell and then right at the end say, "Nah, I changed my mind" and hang up...
Just hang up? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that a simple hang-up is just as (not very) effective at stopping telemarketing as a phenomenon, and takes about 1/100th the time.
I try to be considerate to other persons: let them merge in traffic, hold the door open, not stand in front of the shelf they want to look at, and so forth, but I'm not really inclined to martyr my own time so that someone somewhere won't get a call. That person can do the same as I: just hang up.
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dragging out the call instead of just hanging up, isn't that even more of a waste of your own time
But that's a choice we all get to make based on what we may or may not find amusing at any given moment. The telemarketer (and the company who pays them), on the other hand, doesn't have the luxury of deciding when timewasting is funny. Timewasting always costs them money, 100% of the time. It's never funny for them, which makes it even more funny for us.
... oh say reading slashdot for those
Who's to say that spending five minutes leading a telemarketer on a merry chase isn't just as valid a use of time as
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Sure, it's a hoot the first time or two around, but the thing that we hate about telemarketers is the distraction and waste of time that they represent, isn't it? When you start running through these scripts, dragging out the call instead of just hanging up, isn't that even more of a waste of your own time, taking you away from whatever interesting thing it was that you were doing?
I hate to have my time wasted for nothing. However, as long as it's entertaining, why not. I figure they chose to interrupt my day and take up my time. They owe me either entertainment or money. Since they aren't likely to fork over the cash, I'll extract it in entertainment value.
OTOH, if I'm busy, I'll just hang up or not answer in the first place.
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It's a public service. If I'm yanking a telemarketer's chain, he's NOT pestering someone else.
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Pity more than half of my "telemarketing" calls are these pre-recorded message so I can't really truly counterscript them. Also they drop the line before I can get any information on them. I would like to send these people to Abu Ghraib or some other gulag.
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Re:I hope that this set precedent... (Score:5, Informative)
Last year, out of the blue, I received an envelope from our Commonwealth's Attorney General. My first thought was, "Huh. They finally caught up to me. Took them long enough."
I opened the envelope and inside was a letter and a check. The letter indicated that sometime back I had submitted a complaint to them about someone who had left repeated messages on my answering machine even though I was on the DNC list. After investigation, the company was fined and the check represented my portion of the settlement amount.
The federal list might take longer but at least in my case, Pennsylvania does investigate marketers who do not observe the list and penalizes them.
You're probably wondering about the check, aren't you? It was more than $10 but less than $100. Enough to fill up my tank a few times back when gas was less than $3/gallon.
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Comcast? Is that you?
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Aren't they illegal?
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I wonder if pressing "9" gives them any basis for claiming that you have agreed to the call? And if you don't press it, then you don't find out who its from.
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I'm sorry [whips out pimp gloves and slaps you] these people had no issues with violating the law before, what makes you think that this makes any difference at all? Robbing banks is illegal, and more often than not results in significant time, but does that stop bank robbers? The truth it that casteration is the only real solution. Most of the "people" are typical "I got mine" males. Put the real threat of ball removal in the equasion, and you'll see all these gu
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I'm sorry, but that's simply NOT TRUE. Phone boiler-rooms are just the same as spam servers - finding the actual source is not that easy. And, many are now "out-sourced" off-shore.
So, no, telemarketers are NOT easier to track down.
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The site obviously has an agenda (which I wholeheartedly support) and that is to encourage people to stop using Internet Exploder. I use Opera and it didn't complain, then switched my user-agent string to Mozilla (menu option) and it still didn't complain. The I switched it to IE6 and it complained. Then I switched it to IE7 and it complained. Every site should do this (a quick google turned up only 3 sites). Maybe this could start a movement!
I sniff the UA with a bit of PHP:
if ( substr_count($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"], "MSIE") ) {
/ / IE code here
}
Note, this is the first time that I've been grateful for the forced preview. The comment did not show with the slashes next to each other, and backslashing the comment did not help either. Interesting parser has /., that strips comments in comments.
and if you rtfa (Score:3, Informative)
Re:and if you rtfa (Score:5, Interesting)
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Great to hear a telemarketer getting fined though. Irritating lifeforms.
Jesus Christ (Score:2, Insightful)
That's a whole lot of money for getting called.
You know who else should get slapped with a fine? Companies that hire telemarketers.
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And yes there are those of us that don't believe that pi55ing off 1000 potential customers to get 1 low value sale is a good idea.
Qualitative based projects where the communication itself can add value to the prospect is what works (this is somewhere between customer service and sales)in particular where the person has expressed an interest already and telemarketing is following up.
Re:Jesus Christ (Score:5, Insightful)
There are *no* legitimate telemarketing companies. Nobody has ever asked you to call them on the telephone and try to sell them something; stop trying to pretend otherwise. If you call me with a sales pitch, regardless of what it is or who you represent, I'll want your head on a pike.
Re:Jesus Christ (Score:4, Insightful)
I do believe you have a point that there are no legit cold-call telemarketing companies.
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1. The customer who did not want to renew and has not done so purposefully. The will tell the caller "no" and may even ask to be placed on the company's Do Not Call list.
2. The customer who wanted to renew but forgot about it or for some other reason has not done so yet. They will be grateful to have received a reminder, especially with a discounted rate.
3. The customer who is on the fen
Re:Jesus Christ (Mod me down now...) (Score:2)
What a laugh!
Sure, no one calls a telemarketer and asks them to call back - that logic fails when you are talking about an industry that thrives on cold calling.
Let me share; I work for a company that sells its product through
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I believe many of us would submit that if your industry thrives on cold calling, your industry is not legitimate.
So does extortion and panhandling, but we don't a
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This argument falls flat when we continue to get telemarketing calls from companies who bypass the DNC list with loopholes.
First point: Sign up on the list, problem solved. Otherwise, can't help ya.
Second point: Don't lump us in with the criminals, you can't argue your logic against my points when you are using them as a go-between. It's like saying I'm a religious Jew who must defend myself against your view of Catholics...
T
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Already have. Problem most definitely not solved.
Sure I can. Like another poster mentioned, the effectiveness of your results does not excuse your methods. I used the example of criminals to illustrate that. If you'd prefer, I can compare you to the corrupt politician, who quite likely ge
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Re:Jesus Christ (Score:4, Insightful)
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Absolutely right. Its just one more form of spam (Score:2)
Re:Absolutely right. Its just one more form of spa (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Absolutely right. Its just one more form of spa (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Absolutely right. Its just one more form of spa (Score:2)
To bad, you should try it fried.. about 3 o'clock in the morning.. when its the only thing in the fridge and your to tired and hungry to give a fuck.
Ban them from using phones (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ban them from using phones (Score:5, Funny)
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What would you propose to do with women caught urinating in public?
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There, fixed that for you.
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>:(
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Seriously, I have cid spoofed to play pranks on friends etc, and nobody cares. The crime is when you use the misinformation to take advantage of a system or group of people (especially when money is involved).
why waste their time and money? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe someone can help me understand something here. Why would a company want to waste their resources marketing to people who have made an overt effort to opt-out? Do they really think that people will make a purchase if they could through?
Personally, I've put my number on the "do not call list" and I wouldn't buy anything from a telemarketer purely as a matter of principle - I'd pay more elsewhere just to avoid encouraging this form of marketing. I've never met anyone who didn't feel similar about getting sales calls at home.
Re:why waste their time and money? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the DNC lists went into effect, many telemarketers tried to spin it into a positive thing, saying that the gov't was actually helping them by cleansing their lists of the people who wouldn't buy anything anyway. It was cute, because the DNC lists really killed their old business models. Looks like the survivors out there are relying heavily on loopholes in the law and the relative lack of enforcement.
to remove yourself from this list, click here (Score:3, Insightful)
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"...calling consumers on the National DNC Registry" Maybe someone can help me understand something here. Why would a company want to waste their resources marketing to people who have made an overt effort to opt-out? Do they really think that people will make a purchase if they could through?
I've worked in 2 telemarketing companies when I was a young lad-- degrading work, but indoors and no heavy lifting-- and I can tell you that the First Rule Of Spammers applies to them: They're dumb.
As far as I could tell none of the floor managers had any interest whatsoever in making sales. They cared about other critical metrics such as minimizing bathroom breaks, total number of calls made, how many "objections" we "overcame" before disconnecting, script adherence, etc, but not about sales. I me
Re:why waste their time and money? (Score:5, Funny)
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Maybe some people register on DNC-lists because they know they're pushovers?
Before the DNC, my family's dinner would constantly get interrupted by telemarketers. We would get 3-4 calls between the hours of 5-7PM, from people trying to sell us stuff that we didn't want.
Before the DNC, my family's phone would ring every two hours with calls from people trying to sell us stuff that we didn't want. It got real bad with the predictive dialers, because half of the time no one would be on the other line, or they would hang up after 2 rings.
Before the DNC, my family's phone was used
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Never did understand (Score:2)
If I'm on the Do Not Call list, why do you still want to call me? Even if there was no enforcement, I've registered because:
1) I'm not buying your crap
and
2) Marketing calls annoy the hel out of me
What possible benefit is there to your operatives calling me, getting an earful, wasting their time and spoiling my day?
I mean, if you're spoofing the Caller ID, you know that I'm going to hang up on you if I guess who it is, at which point you
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Because the access to the list costs $$$$ Notice, they did not pay to access the registery. I don't know how much it cost to access the list, but it is a non-zero number.
They were stupid in thinking there would be no repurcussions from calling a bunch of people on the list. This falls under the dumb crooks catagory. The more you call, the more your exposure.
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Sure, sure, someone is buying, but I would have thought the Do Not Call and "I'm blocking you by your caller ID" crowd would be a massively lower return/hit rate than even their usual abysmal hit rate.
Marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
I know a few people who work in telesales and it's usually the stupid and draconian rules put on the employees by the company, despite there being no actual proof that they would improve sales. In fact, in some places where they listen to the employees, changes can be made to INCREASE sales by cutting out known-bad calls as soon as possible.
E.g. (these are ACTUAL examples of PRESENT policies among some UK tele-sales offices)
"You can not hang up on the customer. They must hang up."
One of my friends had a three-hour ordeal with a woman whose husband had died and had to persist trying to sell to her because she could only plead for THEM to hang up, she was so upset. Yes, the woman should have just hung up rather than upsetting herself but she was hardly thinking straight.
"You must try to make an appointment for a salesman to call, even if you know it will mean no sale."
So tele-sales were booking appointments with people who were so annoyed at the telesales that they were threatening violent action. They were talking these people into BOOKING AN APPOINTMENT with a real, physical representative of the company who then turns up their house only to be pulverised.
On a similar tack, I just had a sleazy salesman knock at my door the other day. His opening words, while flashing an EDF Energy ID card, were "Hi, we're from EDF Energy and we're here to give you a new prepayment electricity key". Okay, I'm listening. I have a pre-pay meter. But I know there's something not quite right. The following conversation then ensued.
"Okay... erm... but I don't think I'm with EDF." (I'm actually with E-On but I was sufficiently confused between the two to take a second. Note that in this second he would not have been allowed access to the property or even the meter cupboard anyway. I'm not THAT stupid).
"Oh. Well. Would you mind telling us who you *are* with then?"
"Erm. You know? I'm not telling you."
"Why not?"
"I believe you're a salesman. Goodbye."
"Thank you sir."
Two hours later, he was back and I opened the door again (the wife had been suitably alerted by this time anyway so she would have slammed the door in his face too). He only said "Oh, it's you. We've spoken to you."
What got me was the unbelievably casual fraud (they implied, even if the actual words didn't say, that they were my current electricity supplier when in fact they were planning to sign me up to a new electricity supplier by inserting the key into my meter). And the fact that they went up the road and obviously carried on with the same line for the rest of the afternoon before turning back and trying the houses that they'd missed.
If I hadn't been in the middle of laying a new floor at the time, I would have shouted down the street and knocked on everybody's doors to warn them myself, or call the police and make them explain themselves. They may have been doing nothing "wrong" but I'm sure that a police officer wouldn't take kindly to their sales pitch and it would cause them enough trouble to try another street.
Guess what happens next time I'm choosing an electricity supplier? The ones who commit fraud on my doorstep don't get included.
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"You can not hang up on the customer. They must hang up."
really? h boy are they going to have a large bill next time they call me. I only use my landline for broadband so I don't care if I put it on the side without disconnecting. joy.
"You must try to make an appointment for a salesman to call, even if you know it will mean no sale."
really? well, I'd like the salesman to call on tuesday morning. What time tuesday morning? Yep 'morning'. And then I'll make sure to be out and only get back at 11:59.
Works for them, why can't it work for me?
On the other hand, life is far too short to do anything more than just hangup on them immediately.
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This could be cause I'm an American, but I had no idea you could get pre-paid electric meters. That's pretty interesting.
A lot of countries have electric meters mounted on the outside of the house, either in the front or the back. (This is not as commonplace in America, where a lot of houses still have meters in the basement.) I wonder, if you can put a "key" into this pre-paid meter, what prevents someone from surreptiously inserting their company's key into your meter and forcing a change in your servic
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I had mine swapped out without warning, which of course cut my power. I filed a grievance with the public utility commission which got me a call from the utility apologizing and asking me if it was OK to rescind my complaint; I told them no, it wasn't OK, and what-if-I-had-a-respirator, etc. They gave m
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Ok, this just struck me as funny since my favorite thing to do with telemarketers is to get them talking and then quietly set the phone down and walk away. It doesn't cost me a dime, I have a cell phone for people that need to contact me and I know it hurts them way worse than simply hanging up. It wastes their time and forces them to either wait or hang up eventually. Of course if I was as quick witted as Tom Mabe http://www.tommabe.com/ [tommabe.com], I would
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I have seen a lot of EDF reps around the town, though, all dressed in orange-flourescent workmen's jackets, I assume to make them look official. If I see the guy again, I may have to worry him just out of entertain
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Will it actually change anything? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just the other day, I was taking care of dinner and kids when phone rang. It had my wife's name (yes, I have; and yes some role reversal, but I get home earlier, etc..) Without thinking, I answered. It was a stinking telemarketer. When I chewed her out and she hung up, I looked back at the caller ID log. Instead of my wife's name and cell phone # as usual, it had wife's name and our own land line phone number! So not only did this company spoof the name, but also the #. And it seems to happen a lot lately!
We don't answere the phone unless it is someone we know, and now I have to even worry about that! No, I'm not dodging creditors, I just rank time with kids and family as more important than solicitations for "Troopers association" or other junk callers. If I need your service, I'll look you up. Don't bug me with calls when I'm with the family!
"have been barred..." (Score:3, Insightful)
These ilk drove me nuts (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd been getting calls from "Card Services" [honeypot.net], representing themselves as being with my credit card company, once a day or so for a while. I whipped out a short blog entry one day just to vent, and somehow ended up with several thousands hits per month on it. Apparently I wasn't the only one they were driving crazy. It's good to see that these cretins are finally being reined in.
In later news... (Score:2, Funny)
How did they track the telemarketers down? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm wondering:
1) How did they track down the telemarketers who were spoofing. Obviously they left or gave information about their identity and product.
2) How are these companies being permitted to spoof their Caller-ID? I read an article in alt.2600 a while ago about some of this, but the details escap
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In which case the best option would probably be to either cause the call to fail or route it to the appropriate branch of law enforcement.
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Spam and Telemarketing ARE profitable which is why people do it. As they say there's a sucker born every minute. Also the odds are high that this is a 'separate company' spun off by someone to do telemarketing and thus avoiding the actual judgments on their legitimate businesses.
What the fuck? (Score:2)
Why is it necessary to bar a person from violating a rule? Doesn't the very existence of the rule already imply it should not be violated?
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My son has an amusing pasttime.... (Score:2)
Technological solution (Score:2)
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I totally agree.
Telemarketers generally have their own phone switches. But they have to get service from a phone company in bulk with a big trunk line somewhere. Even for outgoing calls, there has to be a phone number involved (even if there are more lines than numbers). The phone company has to know the number(s) provisioned on that line. So they can check the caller ID info being passed along to see if it is one of the provisioned numbers. If there is no caller ID info at all, it should be substitut
A couple ways to waste THEIR time. (Score:2)
What I do is place them on hold - forever. This wastes more of their time then if I simply hung the phone up.
Woo-hoo! (Score:2)
Dean Wurmer says... (Score:4, Funny)
If I understand this correctly, they may no longer violate the rule because they've been... barred from violating the rule.
That's correct. They're now on double secret probation.
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Grom he actual bill that was passed:
IN GENERAL - It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States, in connection with any telecommunications service or IP-enabled voice service, to cause any caller identification service to knowingly transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value
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I'm guessing they are sending the zeros to make it obvious they have no return (inbound) line and used it to make it plain they are not trying to defraud. I don't know of any caller ID unit that converts a null string to zeros. The calls were outgoing only canned messages. They were not looking for pledges, return calls and chit chat from the voters. I hope it ticked enough off to make a diff
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When I moved to my new house I forgot to register the new phone number, and I got several calls in the first few weeks. I registered right after the first one and after a two or three weeks they