Comments on: Hanging up on telemarketers

As it celebrates its first anniversary, the Do Not Call list seems to be a winner for consumers. Are there lessons for e-mail?

[WDS2]

Awwwwww

Does ANYONE care if telemarketers lose their jobs besides the telemarketers themselves? I thought not.

[sderf]

Freedom not being bothered

I am all for freedom of speech but I am also entitled to freedom from a bunch nitwits trying to sell me something in the privaticy of my own home when I don't want to be bothered. If i want to but a product I will call or visit a store that sells that product. What ever happened the the rights of the ordinary people out here that don't want someome invading there home at all ours of the night or day.
Just leave my phone silent usless I give you permission to call my #
Derf

Doesn't work on international calls

It works fine for calling originating in the States, however, it does not prevent internation calls. I have started to recieve them from Canada. Dont know if it was the luck of the draw or what.

[waltsjc]

Solutions

I have found that many telemarketers ignore the law and do-not-call registry. Sure, I report them, but the calls keep coming and there is nothing more I can do from a legal standpoint.

Enter Asterisk, the open source PBX (runs on Linux and some other unix variants.) Now all calls not on the white-list (friends, family, known businesses that I do business with) must pass the "press 1 to speak with me..." test. Calls with no caller ID must also enter their callback number.
That eliminates 99% of the remaining telemarketers, people dialing wrong numbers at 3am, non-profits, political annoyances, etc.
"Special" callers get even more special treatment.

For email, any kind of registry will be abused. Spammers are criminals and have no regard to laws. The "virtually free" cost and lack of international boundries to the Internet make any kind of laws or regulations all but impossible to enforce. The only way to curb spam is to follow the money. Criminal penalties to those who directly or indirectly (outsource) spam. Severe criminal penalties for those spreading viruses, controlling hijacked servers, etc. ISP's need to help, giving government instant cooperation in tracking connections to / from hijacked systems.

Furthermore, the best way to curb spam once and for all is to build a "web of trust" (search google for more info on this concept.) This way we can "trust" the real sender (person) rather than being forced to trust servers as SPF and other schemes do. It's amazing how many scams (Nigerian style) come from legit accounts on legit servers (they don't seem to use the same style of sending as normal spammers do.)

[beckygf]

THIS COMMENT SHOULD TAKE SOME FOLLOW-UP, IT SEEMS MORE COULD BE DONE EFFECTIVELY. THE PROBLEM IS SO WIDE SPREAD AND NEW SCHEMES COMING ALL THE TIME.

THANKS FOR YOUR THINKING THIS THROUGH AND OFFERING WHAT SEEMS TO BE A WORKABLE SOLUTION!

Anniversary of No-Call Initiative

Kudos on the story, but how can you write so many words and OMIT the number to call to avail oneself of the benefit?

Anniversary of No-Call Initiative

Kudos on the story, but how can you write so many words and OMIT the number to call to avail oneself of the benefit?