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On DDoS, SPAM, Telemarketing And Harrasment? 375

Posted by Cliff from the would-blanket-laws-be-possible? dept.
Slak asks: "Just wondering if the laws under which the U.S. Government is pursuing the DDoS attacks on Yahoo! and Amazon could be applied to telemarketers. I mean, here we have a group that is using a public network to bother end users. " This is a good point. We now have fledgling laws against unsolicited commercial e-mail. What about unsolicited commercial phone calls? They are both forms of harassment. However, protections in the digital world have caught up and surpassed the legal protections we have in meatspace against such annoying practices. Could such laws be written without becoming Draconian in nature? Updated

I should clarify. When I speak of "commercial" phone and "commercial" e-mail, I mean unsolicited contact from a company with the intention of selling you something. Telemarketing has become a large problem in the past decade and I see the spammer as the digital cousin of the telemarketer. However, we now have protections from SPAM yet no protection from the telemarketer (believe me, I've tried ... there was no way I could get an anonymous call block in my area and most telemarketers will not identify themselves via CallerID).

How does the Denial of Service attack fit into all of this? It may not be "commercial" traffic, but it is unsolicited and dealing with it does consume your precious time to get the problem fixed. It's yet another form of harrassment, albeit a different and malicious form. It's like someone calling you up every five minutes and then hanging up. Sure it's harmless, but what happens if someone is trying to make an important phone call to you and can't get through?

Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?

I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

Update: 04/19 05:49 by C : CuriousGeorge113 beamed us this little tidbit: "There's a very interesting SPAM article over at Salon.com today. The article talks about a new SPAM law soon to be in front of Congress, why it won't work, why people SPAM, and why ISP's dont bother to sue SPAMers." so it looks like our protections against SPAMers although in-place rather ineffective. This situation bears watching.
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On DDoS, SPAM, Telemarketing And Harrasment? More

On DDoS, SPAM, Telemarketing And Harrasment?

Comments Filter:

  • Re:But the law doesn't work. (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Re: Hangups from calling machines. An engineer who works on these machines told me to say "Hello", pause, say "Hello" again. Thats how they differentiate a live answer from your answering machine. It works! Now that you have a live telemarketer on the line say, "Hold on a second, I'll get them for you." Then set the phone down... The engineer that told me about this was very embarassed to admit he worked on these anoying devices.
  • Can't speak for all telcos, but Bell Atlantic offers an option that'll automatically block any calls from numbers caller ID can't read. I don't get a lot of telemarketing calls right now, but if they get out of hand, the way they have a few times in the past, I'll spring for this.

    - Robin

  • COLA (Score:2)

    by KMSelf ( 361 )

    Unfortunately, the USPS's change of address form feeds directly into a database which is, you guessed it, sold to marketing firms.

    The turnaround time for propogating the information out is about three to six months, so for the first half of a year, you're ok, but afterwards, you've become identified as a high-quality (recent) address, and to boot, recently moved so a good candidate for household goods, services,....

    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    Scope out Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]

  • ...and what's to keep you from upping the ante on the computational difficulty. Say your problem is "brute force this hash". Increasing the keylength by one byte doubles the (mean) compute time. Make this user configurable, or if you're really smart, code the program to generate problems which require some specified mean time to compute over recent requests recieved, or such.

    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
    Scope out Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]

  • Sorry. The links are actually a "will click on links" list. This should explain why you get more and more spam :P

  • IMHO, the various phone companies are arms dealers in the telemarketing war. First, they sell caller ID, then anonymous numbers, then a service to block anonymous callers, then a service to get past the block (the last number to call you is 'not known', sure it isn't!), now a way to prevent that. All the while, they KNOW who the telemarketers are, and that many of their customers don't want to hear from them.

    It is quite funny when a new telemarketer forgets to buy all the additional services and *69 actually calls them back!

  • If one or more telemarketers calls you, in such a way as to make it difficult to use the phone for your regular purposes, then you have a genuine case of a DoS or DDoS attack, and should be able to file suit accordingly.

    If a telemarketer war-dials you or your company, that may be considered a hostile act of trespass, much as a cracker war-dialling for a modem or portscanning, would be. These are actionable offences, so a telemarketer doing the same thing should fall in the same category.

    Telemarketing, where the audio tape has broken or is not being played (poor maintenance, or bad design) -might- qualify as a DoS attack in its own right, as the technicians at the telemarketing company are certainly denying you the service of the phone line, but they're ALSO denying you the service of the telemarketing company, too!

    (If anyone tries this last one in court, PLEASE post here a description of the judge's expression when you argue that you're being denied the service of a telemarketing company!)

  • A few months back, I received persistant and undesirable telemarketing calls, and decided to do a little bit of research. As it turns out, it's a violation of federal law [junkbusters.com] for telemarketers to continue to call you after you've asked them not to. For each call they make after you've asked them to stop, you're entitled to $500. Certain exceptions apply, but the most obnoxious and persistant telemarketing tactics are illegal and entitle you to monetary compensation.

    Many states including Massachusetts, where I live, allow you to sue telemarketers in their small claims court. In small claims court, you can represent yourself, but have the benefit of a judge who is willing and prepared to explain the law to you if you don't have a lawyer. You plead your case in plain English - and anything that the other side has to say will be explained in plain English. If the Telemarketer you're suing is from another state and opts not to appear because of the expense entailed, you win by default. If the person you're suing fails to make good on the judgement, you have a wide variety of collection methods at your disposal including court ordered asset seizure.

    However, it's far more likely that the Telemarketer will opt to settle with you rather than show up or default in court. After all, if they owe you $1500 for three undesired calls and it would cost them a few thousand to fly their corporate counsel Massachusetts, obtain a lawyer here, etc., it's very much in their best interests to settle with you for $500 or even $1000.

    In my case, the telemarketing firm called me first in November 1999, and then three nights in a row in December. I sent them a demand letter [978.org] asking for $500 and threatening to sue in Massachusetts small claims court if they did not pay. Just before Christmas, I received a letter of appology and acknoledgement of responsibility [978.org] and a check for $500 [978.org]. I sent them a thank you letter [978.org] in which I thanked them for their appology and the $500 payment for the earliest December offense. I hinted that I would attempt to collect the remaining $1000 of their liability if they ever called again.

    On March 4th and 5th, I received two more calls from the telemarketing firm, and sent another demand letter [978.org] this time asking for $1000. On the way to my car on March 24, I found a UPS next day air envelope on my porch, and inside was another appology letter [978.org] and a check for $1000 [978.org].

    So do yourself a favor. Whenever a telemarketer calls you, find out who you're talking to. Ask them never to call you again, and record their name and the time of call in a log. When they call again, give them another reminder. On the third call, threaten to sue if they don't agree to a favorable settlement.

  • The spammers cry free speech, and they do have a point. They are allowed their say. This is a sad fact of the Constitution, but it's one we must put up with if we're to continue enjoying the benefits of our own free speech without the fear that those same rights could someday be taken away.

    However, don't forget that we also have a right to free speech. The First Amendment isn't just for corporations (much as they'd love to think it were... cough... filters...) So while they have the right to approach us and say their piece, we have the right to then tell them to go away and never bother us again. And thanks to the nation's anti-harassment laws, they then have to agree because we've made it clear.

    So in the end, I would propose this. All commercial e-mail, solicited or not, must include a genuine e-mail address to which someone can then reply and opt out. If a user takes this option and ever gets an e-mail from that company again without permission, then the offending e-mail is considered harassment.

    I know this won't be popular here, because of the "everybody gets one shot" inherent in it. I admit, I don't like it either. I'd probably feel a rather perverse glee if every telemarketer on the planet were to spontaneously combust right now. But I have my rights, and they have theirs, and we both have to respect each other's, and that's simply the way it's got to be. And yeah, I take a bit of annoying crap from them because of it (with the assurance that I can stop any company from harassing me at any time). It will still cut down on the spam.

    On a related note, I also think the US needs a privacy amendment to the Constitution. I do think this is needed to stop the involuntary datamining and tracking done by marketers. It's outright silly that we're the last industrialized nation to not treat privacy as a right, but those are the business lobbies for you. I'd recommend a wording something like this:

    1. All United States citizens and residents are recognized to have a right to privacy concerning themselves, their property, and their personal information.
    2. Neither Congress nor the States shall make any law permitting the infringement of the rights defined above, except by consent of the person whose rights would be infringed, or when a proper warrant has been issued by a court of law.
    3. All laws enacted by Congress which would permit such nonconsensual infringement of the rights defined above are hereby repealed.

    My point here is that this, too, would help to cut down on unwanted spam, by making sure that ValueClick's little scheme, and those like it, are illegal unless you agree to be tracked. If you don't want to be tracked, then you simply say so, and you cannot be touched.

    No, the system isn't perfect. No system is. The best you can do is create a system in which everyone's rights are respected. These proposals are an attempt at bringing us closer to that goal.
  • I seem to remember reading somewhere that you could take the business-reply envelope, tape it to a box full of old sheetrock or something, and send it back to the company - and they get to pay for it.

    I was particularly impressed with that simple act. :)

    ---

  • So that's what's been happening to me... Seriously, I didn't know they had that kind of equipment. A while ago, someone started calling me time and time again, and there was never anyone on the other end of the line, so I hung up. It got pretty tiresome after a while, let me tell you. Anyhow, after a few days of this, there suddenly was a person on the other end of the line, who wanted to sell me something. Since then, there has been no phone terror... I must be doing something different from most people when I answer my phone, I answered lots of times before it decided not to hang up on me.

  • NO kididng on the name pronouncement. My name is Seth Bokelman, I can understand, possibly, the butchering of my last name, although I think it looks like it should be pronounced with a long o sound.

    However, when the retard on the other end manages to mangle "Seth", then I know I'm certainly not dealing with anyone who's put more than a half second of thought into the speaking process. They are certainly not calling me because I want them to, or they'd have thought a little more about how to pronounce my name!
    ---
  • Say, that's pretty good. I wish pagers had been popular back when the Moral Majority was a target.

    --Jim
  • I seem to recall maybe twenty years back some liberal group, possibly a gay/lesbian organization, got pissed at some ultra-conservative religious-based organization, possible the (now-defunct thank goodness) Moral Majority, and began a campaign of mass calling the MM's 800 number. The idea was not to deny service through availability, but to drain the MM's pocketbook through long-distance charges. I also remember hearing about solo DoS attacks on 800 numbers in which lone individuals would program their modems to dial the target number repeatedly.

    These might also be Urban Legends, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen... check it out.

    --Jim

  • Unless you opted out of being listed in the Yahoo! member directory, you unfortunately made yourself visible to those nefarious folks who harvest such information. Yahoo! doesn't sell email addresses, but they--and any site with a directory, guest book, user group, chat room, or whatever--are regularly harvested for names.

    When in doubt, opt out. Yahoo! at least lets you unlist yourself, though it is too late for you now...

    -Ed
  • they don't actually take your name off of anything, the just mark you in the database
    They have to do this, or the next time the list is generated from shared information, you'd be re-entered into the database with no information about your request to not be called.
  • You're referring to the TCPA. Briefly:
    • You must explicitly tell the telemarketer to put you on a "do-not-call list". Do not use any other language, like asking not to be called again. The magic words are "do-not-call list".
    • Telemarketers are prohibited from calling you before 9 AM and 10 PM local time.
    • Telemarketers must identify themselves by name and telephone number.
    • Prerecorded telemarketing pitches are banned outright. If you get a prerecorded call, stop right there. They're in a violation of the TCPA, and you can sue them for $500.

    An excellent resource on this subject is http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/telemarketing.htm l [junkbusters.com].

    The strategy that I find that works best is that as soon as I realize that it's a sales call, I politely ask who's calling, and write down the name and the telephone number of the caller. I always keep a pad of paper near the telephone. Then, I just tell the person to put me on a do-not-call list, and that's the end of story.

    When I started doing that, my telemarketing calls dropped measurably. There aren't that many large telemarketing firms out there. There's quite a few, but not really that many. By using explicit straight language, and acting mature (no screaming or yelling), it sends a signal to them that you don't like getting called for anything, so even if the same telemarketing firm is used again by some other company (companies don't generally telemarket themselves, they contract the job out to a telemarketing firm), they just don't bother calling you any more.
    --

  • That the main argument with spam was that using spam, emailers were passing the costs of their advertising efforts to the customer and the servers in between. With telemarketters and direct mailers, they pay for the priveledge of trying to sell you something. That has to be fair. Otherwise, people will start complaining about all the intrusive ads on their television sets.

    Besides that, direct marketers and telemarketers are a LOT more regulated than what seems possible for spammers. There are places where you can submit your name, address, and phone number and effectively "opt out" of all of their promotions. Just about all of the legitamate marketers bounce their lists against those lists in order to lessen their costs (why mail to someone who definetly wont' respond) and to keep in the good graces of the DMA.

    The marketers that don't use those lists are another matter... But if they're not concerned with happy customers, the odds are they're peddling nothing but scams.

    To loop back to the first paragraph of my response... I don't think that any action can really be taken on a large scale against telemarketers, since they pay in order to reach you. Individuals can opt out. And if you get them on the phone, rather than say "i'm not interested" say "take my number off your list and never call me again". It's either federal law or enacted in many states, when you tell a marketer to cease contact with you, they must abide.
  • You are then given the option (via touch tone keys)

    Wrong approach.

    First, as someone else pointed out, they're making money on you from this 'service'. They also charge the telemarketter to be 'unlisted'. At least there's symmetry. :)

    Second, they're still wasting your time. You have to listen, and think, and push buttons. You're already off the crapper, out of the shower, away from the table - interrupted.

    The effort of dealing with the process of telemarketting should be placed squarely on the shoulders of the telemerketter. They should deduct (pay) from your long-distance bill for the amount of time they cause you to waste.

    Telemarketting should be PROFITABLE to the potential customer. Like getting paid to surf, you should be getting paid to listen to the sales-pitch, on a 'by choice only' manner.

    Or maybe, the phone company should offer you a FREE (paid for by the 'Telemarketters Federal Fund ' or something) LCD screen, like the stand-alone callerID box, that will scroll the numbers and deals of the telemerketters... You review them at leisure (or cancel cold, your choice) and call back at the push of a button, those companies or charities that you're actually interested in.
  • Duh, how do you think AOL and Yahoo make all their money?
  • The Junkbusters site has some useful info, but notice it doesn't tell you (anywhere I could find) who they are, and how they are funded. As far as I can tell, they are a PRO-marketing outfit intended to take the heat off the entire direct marketing industry.

    People see their 'to-do' lists and feel it's too much trouble to actually do, while simultaneously feeling 'protected under the law'. In essence, they imply it's *you're* fault for not being diligent.

    Furthermore, two minutes of inspection will show you that their advice is flawed. often the very first suggestions on each page are ineffective.

    Take their 'script' for dealing with telemarketers, which begins:

    ...just ask the questions in this script. If they answer no, you may be able to sue them. You can print copies of it to keep by every phone at home. If everyone follows it, the junk calls will slowly but surely drop off.


    • ``Are you calling to sell something?'' (or ``is this a telemarketing call?'')
    • ...


    So if my sister calls, and I ask this question, and she answer "No", I can sue her? ;-> But seriously, I've actually tried it, and invariably the telemarketer offers some deflecting answer beginning with 'No' ("No, I just want to let you know about an opprtunity...") You can spend a long time trying to get them to admit they're selling something (they are given deflecting scripts to use against this checklist!) and I doubt you'd have any luck suing on the basis that they denied trying to sell you something.

    I love checklists, but his one seems designed to grind you down so you eventually stop asserting your rights. It asks you to do a *lot* more work than is required by law, and adds nothing to your privacy (9 questions if you *don't* want to sue, when all you legally have to do is tell them to put you one their company-wide "do not call" list. 20 steps (not all bulleted) per call if you want to sue) It makes every marketing call exactly the sort of interuption you're trying to avoid. Result: you think it's more prudent to hang up, and your name stays on the list.

    Another flawed strategy, the first suggestion on the main page, is to contact the DMA. Compliance with the Direct Marketing Association 'Don't call' list is purely voluntary. Few telemarketers check it (even if they're members of the DMA) and more importantly, it *does not* 'start the clock' on the more stringent actions allowed by law [like suing in small claims].


    __________

  • One side benefit about moving every couple of years is that the snail-mail-spam drops off to nothing when you hit the new address!
    SPAM, I still can't do much about, besides using mojo@nixon.com to fill in mandatory web registration forms, and I *still* get crap through 2 of my email addresses.

    Of course, the unfortunate thing about my last move (July, 1999) was that my current phone number belonged to a computer company: people still call asking for ***** computers, and the first few months of living here junk faxes would ring and ring at all hours of the night.

    Pope
  • I'm fairly sure that a number of laws have been passed that make telemarketing over cellular completely illegal. It is direct theft of service, as the vast majority of cellular calls cost the phone owner by the minute, or the second...... and this used to cost a LOT.
  • Perhaps my years of reading Adbusters (check it out sometime) has taught me a few things.. and I *try* to practice what I preach.. things like:

    - Don't respond to spammers. Ever. Period.
    - Don't buy things from companies who's advertising insults your intelligence.
    - Don't buy things from companies who's advertising practices annoy you.
    - DO NOT LET ADVERTISING INVADE YOUR LIFE. IT doesn't HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.

    Cancel your cable TV. Go DO something. Even if you don't cancel it, stop watching it! Sure.. watch the news... but cut it down!

    The movies? Wait for DVD. Seriously.
    Nothing pisses me off more than going to the movies, paying my $10, and exorbitant price for popcorn/soda, and then waiting for 15 goddamn minutes while they put on ADVERTISING! I just don't go anymore. I refuse to pay my own money to see advertising.

    Web banners? Sure! No problem!

    You know what's good for your community? Watch TV one night, and write down everyone who advertises. Then, go look for alternative products that don't advertise. If you have to advertise it, it must not be that good...
  • The point, I think, is that, regardless of the method used, a DDOS is a deliberate action taken by an individual/group to disrupt a service. This is just plain wrong. If it's not intentional.. it's not as wrong.

    example: You are unloading your moving van, and don't notice that you ahve blocked my driveway.
    Are you guilty of blocking my free movement? Not exactly.. it's an accident.

    But.. if you park a big truck in front of my driveway with the express purpose of keeping my car in the driveway.. you are directly violating my rights.

    (and I might blow up your truck)
  • Moderators, moderate this up.

    This is an excellent idea, and really the kind of service I would like to see from my own telco. A service that caters to the end-user.. not to the telespammers.
  • BTW, does anyone else feel motivated to start dealing out pain when some telemarketer introduces their spiel by saying "This is just a courtesy call..."

    If I am bored and have ample free time, at this point I usually ask "You mean courtesy to me?" This gets them off their script and it's always funny to hear them ad lib. Usually after a couple of minutes of umms and hmms they have to admit that yes, this is a courtesy to me, and then, of course, I ask them to explain how exactly calling me in the middle of my { dinner | lovemaking | preparing for the assassination | meditation | etc.etc. } is courtesy. Can be fun.

    Kaa
  • You need the ability to make additional phone charges,
    the way 900 numbers can, on home phone numbers. You
    could have a pre-ring recording warn callers that,
    at your discretion, you can charge them some arbitrary
    amount of money. (Sure, you could zap non-telemarketers
    too, but you'd just be punishing yourself by scaring
    away your friends.)
    -------
  • It seems to work reasonably well on slashdot, why not moderate the telephone system? The telephone company could keep track of each subscriber's karma, and refuse to connect any calls when the caller's karma was less than a threshold set by the called party. After each telephone call, the called party could punch in a moderation code on their telephone to increment/decrement the caller's karma.
  • I've found that a simple "No, thank you." works very well. Don't try to argue or negotiate with them.
  • Since I got my cable modem and cancelled my landline telephone service. It seems telemarketers will not call cell phones for some reason.
  • When you get one of those nice spams that ask you to reply that that address with the word remove, it's awfully satisfying to spoof a message from postmaster@<their_domain>.com with a subject of remove.
  • A law should be passed that requires anyone sending unsolicited bulk email to pay postage to the U.S. Government. The government gets an Internet tax. The spammer gets to send mail.

    Ooo! I like this! The only thing that bothers me is that the courts will probably find that it violates the first ("Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech...") and fourteenth ("...equal protection of the laws...") Amendments to the Constitution.

    Besides, knowing Congress, they'd probably want to tax ALL email. (They'll say "It's only fair...")

  • My Answering Machine: "Hello?" (pause)
    Telemarketer: (Thinking he's got a live one): Is Mr. ***** there?
    MAP: Uh, he's not here right now. Just leave a message after the beep. (Beep)
    T: WTF???

    And it really works. My roommate's mother once called up and got this, and later claimed to have *actually had a conversation with me*. [ROFL!]

  • The law should simply forbid forging return addresses. There is precedent in the junk fax mail law. It is illegal to send a fax without including the originating number. That simple fix will eliminate nearly all spam within a week.

    Scenario:
    1)Spammer fires of 10,000,000 GET FREE PRON notes
    2)I open the mail
    3)I hit the RETURN TO SENDER button after attaching a 2Meg bitmap of HOT GRITS IN MY PANTS, as do 999,998 others (one person actually thought he could get free porn, but his wife was watching so he moved the note to a different folder for safe keeping)
    4)Spammer's ISP get clogged mail servers and cancel the spammers account.
    5)Problem solved.

  • If you can't trust the state to do it, what makes you think you can trust the Fed to do it?
  • Legally, telemarketing and spamvertising are two seperate issues. The issue is one of payment.

    In telemarketing, the advertiser contacts you over the telephone. They, not you, pay for the call. While there are regulations against this, part of the control mechanism for this sort of thing is that the advertiser has to pay for it.

    Spam, however, is a neat little thing. Email costs more for the recipient than for the sender, because it's on the hard drive of the recipient (or their ISP) for longer than on the drive of the sender. Basically, they're advertising to you on your dime. Even if you don't pay per MB or per email (who does, today?), the costs of spam are incurred by your ISP. One way or another, you are going to pay for the service of having an average of fifteen MAKE MONEY FAST WITH FREE PR0N messages in your mail queue at any given time.

    This is why people started equating email with, of all things, fax machines. There are Federal restrictions on unsolicited fax transmissions, again on the principle of "you don't advertise on the customer's dime". While the long-distance charge on such a call is small (they are short calls), the recipient is paying for paper and ink. Amusingly, the legal definition of a fax machine fit the PC pretty well. So much for the fine print.

  • If email cost more to send to someone you've never sent mail to before, even just a few pennies (whether of money or computing power), spam would not be a problem.

    Consider, if nothing else, the multi-jurisdictional nature of the Internet.
    -russ
  • First of all, you only need to worry about email from someone you've never heard from before. How much *real* unsolicited email have you gotten today? How much unsolicited email did you send?

    But really, there's no point in arguing with you, I should just go implement a paid email system, and become wealthy. :)
    -russ
  • Mailservers can't really keep track of 'who talked to who', and even if they could, I don't think many of us would like them to. ( Big Brother? ;)

    Yes they can. Check where syslog is sending mail.debug messages to. This will record each message as it goes through the server with almost every MTA.

    So, say we put a 25 cent 'tax' on every email someone sends. You really couldn't make it smaller, because the spammers are looking at a 10,000 address/day mail list with a 2% return. ($12.50 in mail for every product sold).

    How could you do this? If I send email from one of machines to another machines, then I'm the only person who can tell this happened. There is certainly no way that I'm going to let someone else check my logfiles just so they can tax me.

  • Hmmm... didn't even know yahoo *had* chat rooms (not that I would visit them anyway).

    >I don't think Yahoo is selling your email addr. Just for "testing", I made a brand new account and never went into a chatroom using the main name. NEVER got a single spam mail on that account.

    Well... absoloutly NOTHING has ever been done with this account. No chats, no mail, no postings. Zip, zero, zilch, nil, nada (null, even)...

    I *did* check something that said 'please oh please don't list me or let anyone find me', but that never works 8^)
  • Tangential adivce, applicable usually only at the University of North Dakota: DO NOT give your name, phone number, etc. to the Campus Crusade for Christ. Yea, they're raffling a futon---and they'll use your name and contact info to harass you about your religious views.

    ----
  • I'm not an ISP administrator, but I suspect the marginal cost of junk email isn't that big a deal.

    A rather clearer-than-usual version of "I don't know jack about this, but here's my opinion anyway". I'd rather pay attention to informed analysis [brightmail.com], which doesn't support your position.
    /.

  • "Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?"
    No, no and no. "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment tells us, to abridge the freedom of speech.

    Freedom of speech does not include creation of a public nuisance or misappropriation of other people's property.

    There is a large body of legal precedent supporting "time, place, and manner" regulations [mtcibs.com], provided they pass the following three-part test:

    1. Content-Neutral -- The regulation must be independent of the message. For this reason, spam is properly defined as bulk
    unsolicited e-mail, without regard to its possible "commercial" content.

    2. Narrowly Tailored For Significant Government Interest -- The regulation must address a significant problem in the least restrictive available manner. The "significant problem" in the case of spamming is large-scale abuse of other people's e-mail bandwidth, to the point where if tolerated it would quickly render e-mail useless. The one major question is exactly what constitutes the "least restrictive" means to get the job done.

    (The fact that private filtering may be able to stop spam carries some weight, but is not an overriding factor. By analogy, it is possible to chemically treat walls so that paint will not stick to them, but this does not invalidate anti-graffiti laws.)

    3. Alternative Channels -- The regulation must not choke off all avenues of communication. This is easily met; someone prevented from spamming remains free to electronically disseminate his message to the Net via a Web page, for example.


    /.
  • Why should someone who sends some spam get a huge fine or prison sentence when all they did was waste a few seconds of a bunch of people's time

    Let's see -- 250,000 recipients (a very lowball estimate) times 2 seconds each (ditto, considering that spam is usually disguised to look like legitimate e-mail, and is often long enough to take several seconds to download over a dial-up) times the minimum wage... OK, I'd be satisfied to see a spammer get the same penalty he'd get for lifting $715.27 from somebody's wallet. (Note that I have generously given the spammer a pass on the bandwidth costs.)

    when someone who sends junkmail has used up millions of dollars worth of natural resources that cannot be replaced

    Nonsense. Someone who sends paper mail bought the paper and paid the postage. The law in civilized nations treats private property differently from stolen goods.
    /.

  • Further, what's the difference from junk snail mail and spam email?

    The senders of junk snail mail pay their own postage. The senders of spam e-mail steal user bandwidth. Next question?

    It is more environmentally conscious to send spam

    You are not helping your credibility by parroting a standard spammer excuse. Paper is recyclable (if only via decaying and reentering the soil biomass); electrical energy isn't.

    If there is a way to regulate commercial advertisements so that they are no longer an annoyance, it would require carefully defining commercial so that solicited literature can get through, but the loophole for this is not large enough for others to use.

    "Commercial" is the wrong criterion. "Unsolicited Bulk" is the correct criterion. Sending political, religious, or just plain gibberish spam steals bandwidth just as effectively as commercial spam. The main difficulty is defining and proving "bulk" -- it's clearly unreasonable to treat somebody who forwards jokes to three or four uninterested people as if he'd blasted out millions of MAKE.MONEY.FAST spams.

    Reduced rates are what you pay

    In the case of spam email, increased rates are what you pay. The spammer doesn't pay for his bandwidth; the recipient ISPs do, and they don't get their reimbursement from the Tooth Fairy.
    /.

  • that you can install on your phone line, that notices that the incoming caller is blocking their identifying information, and steers them directly to an answering machine?

    I would like then to ask them "if you are not a telemarketer, press 1".

    Otherwise the phone does not even ring.

    I have been looking for either an answering machine that does this or some sort of caller-ID device with this functionality and they do not apparently exist. I would rather "do the job myself", then pay the phone company another overpriced monthly fee.

  • How inconvenient is it to deal with telemarketers? How inconvenient is it to live in a society with no free speech?
    False dichotomy. It's not necessary to censor to stop telemarketers - just don't allow them to sell anything!

    Simply have the law be that no person or company that engages in, or hires others to engage in, spam, junk faxing, or telemarketing, will be allowed to get a sales licence, commercial zoning permit, or any other licence or permit for commercial activity from the state. A federal version would disallow interstate commerce by any person or company that did so.

    This puts no damper on citizens' speech on any topic, and doesn't extend state or federal power at all.

  • Junk fax laws seem to be pretty reasonable, and some folks have tried to say that they should be applied to e-mail spam too. The case for that seems a little weak; but they might be a good place to start writing new laws for both spam and telemarketing.

    OTOH, enforcement of junk fax laws is probably easier than anti-spam ones, since it's pretty darn difficult to fake your originating phone number (ff you can hack SS7, you probably have better things to do with your time than make junk phone calls), and there's a central record of calls (which is very useful for cases of telephone harassment).

    There are no technical problems with anti-telemarketing ones, only political ones. Telemarketing is big business, and the one great principle upon which all American politics is founded is "Money Talks".

    (<rant>BTW, does anyone else feel motivated to start dealing out pain when some telemarketer introduces their spiel by saying "This is just a courtesy call..." No, if there was any courtesy involved you wouldn't be bothing me, would you?</rant>)

  • My pet peeve (right now) is predictive dialing. Their PBX dials a bunch of numbers all at once, and when someone answers, they are patched through to a waiting telemarketer. The problem occurs when there are more answers than telemarketers, so some victims answer the phone to a dead line. A third of my phone calls are dead lines like this, and it ought to be against the law.

    (IANAL, but in some readings of the law, it is. There are laws that outlaw war-dialers and harassing phone calls by language like "it is unlawful to dial a phone without the intent to communicate". Shouldn't predictive dialing fall under this?)

    Of course, there is the bonus that with predictive dialers, the telemarker doesn't hear your initial "hello". If you ever call my house, and you don't respond to my initial "hello" (or respond with a "hello?" that sounds like "is anyone there?"), expect to be hung up on.
    --
  • Hrm. I'm reminded of a time I was stranded in the airport in Little Rock. I was trying to make a collect call back to Canada, and AT&T does their collect call stuff all by computer/automated voice, so that when it calls the person, there's a two-second delay, and then the computer voice kicks in asking if they want to accept the charges. Well, I kept trying to make my collect call, but the guy I was calling kept hanging up before the computer voice would kick in! That got really old really fast.
  • There is an organization, the DMA (Direct Marketing Association, http://www.the-dma.org), that offers their Mail, Telephone, and E-mail Preference Services. They are designed for catalogers and telemarketers, and now e-mail advertisers, to match their lists against and drop those names on the service. So, if you are on the preference list, *reputable* companies will drop you from their lists. Of course this does not force companies to use the list, since the DMA is a self-regulated body, but it does encourage compliance.

    At least it's a start...

    The DMA Privacy top page.
    http://www.the-dma.org/library/privacy/index.sht ml

    :P
  • More importantly than can such laws be written, is whether such laws should be written. It isn't really the responsibility of the government to protect us from advertisements. The government does not need us begging it to have more authority, they are perfectly happy to grab it for themselves.

    Be honest: we do not need laws to keep these things off of us. I don't get much spam, and what I do I can generally trace back to some website or other I signed up for voluntarily. I can filter it if it gets bad, opt out, I can hang up on telemarketers. If someone doesn't identify themselves on Caller ID (and that bothers you), let the machine filter it, most direct dialing in my area is done by a computer that hangs up if it hears an answering machine. DoS has technical solutions; some have been proposed, I'm sure others are being worked on, and the slowest technical solution will be faster coming and more effective when it gets here than the best law Congress can pass. Congress and the state legislatures should worry about important things, like health care and the fate of Cuban toddlers, and leave us alone to solve our own minor problems.


  • Spam and telemarketing can be stopped, easily.

    I have rule: I never buy anything I hear about from either spam or telemarketing. If I already use a service, I stop. I call the businesses and tell them -- they often don't know how much people hate telemarketeers.

    (To the caller: "Have you considered taking up prostitution so that your mother could be proud of you?")

    I never even read SPAM, unless it comes from a business I already patronize.

    In this case, I let the business know I will NEVER use their produces/services again.

    I keep a note book so that I can keep these promises.

    If any significant number of people adopted these rules SPAM and telemarketing would die overnight.

    Lew
  • A lot of internet companies are basically doing this already - paying customers to look at ads. My personal favorite is <a href="http://www.jackpot.com">jackpot.com</a>.
  • I just thought I would point out the review here a few weeks back of Database Nation: The Death of Privacy at the End of the 21st Century. [slashdot.org] by Simson Garfinkel. He gives some attention to the possible consequences of the increasing coalescing of information about us. I'm about two thirds of the way through it and there are no general ideas that aren't familiar ground for long time readers of the Risks Forum [sri.com] and the Privacy Forum [vortex.com], although there are some frighten examples that were new to me. However, if you need a book to explain to Mom why you are concerned about privacy issues, this is a good one.
  • Of course, there is the bonus that with predictive dialers, the telemarker doesn't hear your initial "hello". If you ever call my house, and you don't respond to my initial "hello" (or respond with a "hello?" that sounds like "is anyone there?"), expect to be hung up on.


    Yes, predictive dialers help me distinguish between solicited and unsolicited calls. People returning my calls don't use them. Telemarketters seeking to maximize the number of contacts with people off a large list do. If I don't hear a person at the other end, I usually hang up.

    Of course, telemarketters serve a very useful social function. It seems that every society defines a hierarchy of more or less respected professions. With the exception of malpracticing quacks and ambulance chasers, doctors and lawyers are afforded considerable respect. So are many other professions. And in these politically correct days, we try not to look down on those who take unpleasant jobs to pay the bills. But when someone calls to be rude....

    And a note to all telemarketters: Put me on your Do Not Call List. Calling me is just a way to hear me say that with my own voice.
  • Mailservers can't really keep track of 'who talked to who', and even if they could, I don't think many of us would like them to. ( Big Brother? ;)

    So, say we put a 25 cent 'tax' on every email someone sends. You really couldn't make it smaller, because the spammers are looking at a 10,000 address/day mail list with a 2% return. ($12.50 in mail for every product sold).

    Now, how many email are you going to send today? I've sent fifty already, and I still have a half-full inbox. That's probably 100 email/day, or $25.. I might as well call them all long distance during peak-use! It would be as cost effective!

    And what if we simply required 'spam' agencies to register and pay 'X' per email? Well, they've already shown themselves to be scum. They're not going to buy it.
  • I keep getting hang-up calls which I know are from telemarketers. They have dialers which dial up a whole bunch of prospects at once when they have an operator free or about to be free, and all but the first one to answer get a hangup. These calls are always without ID information. Here's what's broken about it:
    1. The telescum can call me to the phone several times a day, without telling me who they are.
    2. The telescum hang up on me, without giving me any opportunity to get on their do-not-call list and stop them from doing it again.
    3. The telescum do not pass any information to my telco's phone switch, so my call-trace won't work. (I'd report them as chronic harassers and try to get their service cut off, but this is next to impossible if there is no way to trace the call to back up the report.)
    This problem is caused by the phone system allowing these scum to connect without passing proper ID information, and the lack of laws at the Federal level about telephone harassment. If they were forced to ID, I could block them with hardware that recognizes their name or phone number. If they had to report their phone number to the local telco switch, I could use call-trace to enter a report of harassment. If they were forced to actually have someone talk to me or otherwise give me the chance to get on their do-not-call list if I picked up the phone, I could get rid of them that way. But nothing makes them do that, so they can make me drop what I'm doing ten times before I get a chance to tell the live piece of talking pond scum at the other end that they should put me on the DoNotCall list and then kindly FOAD.

    And that sucks.
    --

  • I've never gotten a lot of phone spam - the bulk of it was from telephone companies and newspapers, and they're pretty good about obeying don't-call-list rules. (The rules, and their databases, aren't bright enough to prevent them from calling multiple phones at the same house, but my second line is usually either busy or answers with modem tone and usually has the phone ringer turned off.) Some of the new telespam machines are pretty insidious, but the "hello ... 2 second pause" usually gets them.
  • Isn't this bad like SPAM e-mails? I know that if you reply to remove from SPAM e-mails, then the spammers know your e-mail address is legit and pass it to other companies. Can't telemarketers do the same if they are told to remove your phone number?

    I look forward to hearing for replies.
  • Damn, I wish it was the same and easy for e-mails :(.

  • Can large number of flames from Slashdotters to be considered spam?
  • The best way is to order the free CDs and not purchase the required one. Nothing gets you off the list like being a delinquent. By the way, don't use your real name.
  • Would it be possible for the phone company to offer a service that either before the number rings or immediately after a connection has been established a computerized voice says "No solicitors"? Either that or a tone (because the phone companies seem really attached to them.) I know I'd pay about $5 a month for that.
    Especially if they had to be obeyed like the signs.
  • Goofy or not, in our city solicitors (People selling stuff. Not lawyers.) aren't allowed to darken your door if you have a "No Solicitors" sign.
    Maybe the system would be configurable so that you could enable it while you're eating dinner or spending time with the family watching a movie or playing Scrabble. We don't usually go to the trouble of turning off the ringer or screening our calls, so we have to stop a lot of nice sounding people in mid-schpiel to turn them down. I'd much rather have the voice.
  • A law should be passed that requires anyone sending unsolicited bulk email to pay postage to the U.S. Government.

    This would be relatively easy to regulate and enforce. You (spammer) pay the postage. Prorate according to message size in bytes. The government gives you a bunch of unique codes. Each message you send must contain a code. You (recipient) could challenge whether the sender of an email has paid postage by forwarding the mail to the governent. If it's an unauthorized or duplicate (or nonexistent) mail code, the spammer gets canned. Maybe someone has a better idea than this, but the main point is that it shouldn't be hard to enforce such an obligation.

    The government gets an Internet tax.

    The spammer gets to send mail.

    You and I may get some junk mail sometimes, but we don't have to worry about the Internet email system simply collapsing from abuse.

    Of course, you retain the right to reject your mail outright. Just because someone puts a stamp on something doesn't mean you're obliged to open and read their message.
  • Well, I was going through moderating this, but I had to mention something:

    Zero Knownledge (www.freedom.net) makes use of a hard to compute but easy to check problem to avoid DOS attacks. This would be perfect for email as well. Procedure:

    You contact my SFMTP (spam free mail transfer protocol) server, and say you have a message for me.
    The server gives you a problem to solve, like "give me a 128 bit string which has 0x1234 as the first 16 bits of it's MD5 hash".
    The sender has to go do a computationally expensive search for such a string. It finds it.
    The receiver can easily check that the answer is correct (and thus that the computer spent the time calculating it).
    The receiver accepts the email.
    The supercomputer goes on to the next recipient on it's spam list.

    --Kevin
  • After I hung up on them they even called me right back

    Ha, I remember a few years back the entreprenurial chimney sweeps called, it went something like this:

    (ring)
    Person on phone: Hi, Mr Jawonokowitz?
    Me: It's Jankowski
    Person on phone: I'm from "Fly By Night" chimney sweeps and ...
    Me: Not interested (Hang up phone)

    4 seconds later...
    (ring)
    Person on phone: Oh hi again Mr Jankowitz, I just wanted to let you know that...
    Me: Look, I'm very busy, I'm not frigging interested. (Hang up phone)

    4 seconds later...(ring)
    Person on phone: Hey, you could at least talk to me with respect, I'm not...
    Me: Hey you FUCKING ASSHOLE, stop calling me! (hang up phone)

    4 seconds later...(ring)
    Person on phone: How dare you talk to me that way? What gives you the...
    Me: Call me back again and I'm calling the police you stupid minimum wage piece of shit! (hang up)

    And that did it. See it's not hard, I guess that telemarketing company didn't have much experience in dealing with us pleasant-mannered New Jersey people ;)
  • Here's a great website for disecting those headers and automatically notifying abuse@spammer.com for you. It's called SpamCop [spamcop.net], and certainly beats the 'ol nslookup and whois.
  • Here's my personal problem:
    If one calls and asks for Michael Roberto, I have to answer and say yes, because there's a good possibility that its Ohio State (the school I am going to this fall), or one of the other schools that I rejected. Then I *have* to hear the telemarkter, at which i take the necessary process if it's not OSU.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
  • While reading this, a telemarketer called. I told her to take me off their list.

    Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
  • telemarketer(generally with southern accent: hello, can i speak to mr.... um... matzager?

    me: (talking to someone in room) ya gook amaton telefona goanooa ga foona
    (to telemarketer) he is not speaking the english, i will to be translating for you

    telemarketer: i'm calling today to tell you about our low introductory rate for the discover gold platinum card... (etc)

    me: (to someone in room) yamma dinnga og la ponuma gaylay discover ye plantuim gold alkaka fon dingadingadinga do par qoo (etc)
    (hold phone away, now the other person in room talking) kaka holaapop! yohga harlima goarboopa lamerasay godda dingaliglalinga fart! danka tochinea gooka joibers!
    (to telemarketer) mr metzger is wishing me to be informing you that he wishes you to take card and stick it in your bumhole

    ... you can't take revenge on spammers like that. if you reply they just take it as a sign that your email address is active and then they spam it some more

    ---

  • I never worked for a telemarketer, but I spent three years at a survey institute. (Not as a caller, but as a programmer)

    They use autodialers too. The key is to trim the autodial level so that no caller spends too much time without someone at the other end, while at the same time there must always be someone ready to take the call once the connection is made.

    ('Course your average call-o-matic service would not care of the latter, since they get paid to make N calls, not to get N calls to non-pissed off persons.)

    If more people would start doing the "two seconds then hang up" routine, the telemarketers would simply trim the response time down to one second. It would cost a little more, maybe drive out the worst scum, but not fix anything.

    BTW offtopic: If you are looking for bitter enemies to the telemarketers, try (serious) survey companies. The one I worked for has a good reputation, so most people recognoized them and answered. However as more and more telemarketing is performed, it is increasingly difficult to get interview time. We are reaching the point where it does not pay to try to be ethic when mass-calling. Since those with a clue block their phones due to the telespamming, the only option left is to raise the volume to get more suckers.

  • Don't Annoy Me, Inc. [dontannoyme.com] will tell over 1,500 telemarketing companies to leave you alone and supply you with a list of companies contacted which should keep you off of their lists for 10 years.

    For what it's worth, when I told AT&T to remove me from their call list, they were very polite, removed me immediately and sent me a letter confirming my removal with a number to call if I was ever contacted by them again so there are some companies who take it very seriously.

    - tokengeekgrrl
    "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions

  • Yes, you are correct, that was the main reason why people were complaining - it wastes physical consumable media. e-mail definitely does cost money as well, but, as you point out, so does wasting our time. But because we don't get charged for the call from a telemarketer, than the only thing we are charged with is the time we spend, which, as you point out is difficult to quantify. I think that applies to e-mail too, though. Most of us get free e-mail one way or another. If we pay for online time (do we still do that?), we'll get charged for additional time online. But that should be negligible nowadays (unless of course, if the spam is so overwhelming, which it often is).

    But if you raise the issue of first amendment, it brings up a very interesting point. Is a phone call considered free speech? I forget which one of the early forefathers or historically significant figures it was - who said something like "I disagree with what you say, but I will fight to the death to defend your right to say it". I know I haven't gotten it right. But in any case, the point is, you can say whatever you like, and I can't stop you from saying it. But I think I should have a right to not listen to it. Just like all the people who complain about offensive TV and/or radio shows - they could choose not to tune in, but they should have no rights to bar the people broadcasting the message. My phone is very specifically a personal communication device, as is my e-mail address, so I'd believe. I think that I should be entitled to being able to prevent people from using it for their free speech, because I cannot really choose not to "tune in".

    Can you see any problems with my argument? Do you know of any legislation that covers what I'm talking about (because I can't think of any myself).

  • This actually brings up another point which I wonder about, and I wish that this was somewhere more people can read it so I can get some answers from more people.

    Everyone put in anti-spam stuff in their e-mail address here at slashdot, so obviously, it's because everyone don't want to be spammed, because there must be programs out there that scrape the e-mail addresses from web pages, right?

    Well, what's to prevent an unscrupulous person who may work at an ISP or at one of the major exchanges to tap the e-mail messages being relayed? Now, I don't know enough about the way e-mail works in the backend to know if it is possible. But the assumption is, if there's e-mail being sent, then the originator and/or the destination will contain valid e-mail addresses. What's to prevent people who happen to relay all this e-mail traffic from extracting all the valid e-mail addresses within, and pass the e-mail off normally? This is one way for them to get huge quantities of valid e-mail addresses. Has there been anything like this?

  • I recall from when I used to work at a fax service bureau company, that unsolicited advertisement through fax is also illegal. One of the things that we used to do to get around it is to send it in the guise of doing a survey or updating our database (whether for us, or for a client that is requesting this service). When the faxes' disguise as a survey is too thin (meaning, it's too obviously an advertisement), we have gotten a few phone calls from people threatening legal action. But certainly, in that case, it is illegal by fax. I wonder what the lawmakers' justifications were for this law and not telemarketing phone calls? I think this was a federal law, so it wasn't limited to states.

    I think that all of this ties in with the privacy issue as well. We don't like to have our information hanging out there, with anybody being able to pick up what we bought or did, where we were (online or in the real world) and when. Telemarketers (as far as I know, and or so I would assume) don't just dial sequential blocks of numbers, they usually have a list of numbers that they obtained from somewhere, just to save themselves a little bit more time and money. I know there are systems out there that just does brute-force sequential block dialing, and only connect the telemarketer is someone actually picks up the call, just as in spamming, there must be mailers out there that just tries out all the shorter e-mail name combination of large e-mail domains such as hotmail and yahoo. But I think for the most part, real addresses and real telephone numbers are important to the telemarketers and the people who sell them these lists. And that, to me, seems to be more of a privacy issue than an annoyance issue.

    On a side note: How many people have gotten spam that says: If you do not want to receive any further e-mail like this, send mail to...? How many people actually do it? I don't do it because I think that it would just validate my address to them, that there's actually a person who checks his e-mail at this address. What do you think?

  • Is there also a law that forces them to call me during dinner? I've always wondered about that.

    Mmmmmm....that smells good...

    *RING*

    fuck.

  • The Direct Marketing Association has some useful services. I'm listed with all three, and I get very few junk phone calls, despite a listed number. Junk snail mail still comes in, but not much of it.signing up The DMA's "anti-spam service" seems to have had zero effect. I don't think their domain-wide removal service does anything at all.

    If you answer your phone with something other than "Hello", the "answering machine detector" in most telemarketing predictive dialers will hang up the call. Really. The "Hello detector" is dumb, but able to distinguish "Hello" from a longer message. Try answering with your name and you'll start hearing hang-ups.

  • Junkbusters (Score:3)

    by Amphigory ( 2375 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:48AM (#1125715) Homepage
    Junkbuster have a page on dealing with telemarketing. See here [junkbusters.com]. Fact is that there's a lot you can do.

    --

  • Mickonline dun said:

    I've actually worked in telemarketing The only way you ever take someone's name off (for any type of financial telemarketing) is if they are a pensioner i.e. we couldn't sell them anything. In addition, if we determined from a few houses that this was a low income area we would write that down. So if you don't want to be rung, tell them you're 80 with no money. However, since the CD's with everyones phone numbers on them are sold from company to company, only one company will ever cross you off their list.

    Dear Mickonline:

    I would be extremely interested to know which telemarketing firm you worked for.

    I would like to know this, because if they ever call me I want to be able to nail their balls to the wall. >:)=

    You see...your company engaged in two flatly illegal practices.

    Firstly...if someome requests that they be placed on your "do not call" list, by law you must maintain that list for ten years. Furthermore, if they also request that you send them your "do not call" policy, you are again required by law to send that to them. (FWIW--you are required to have a "do not call" policy--it's quite illegal to operate without one.)

    More info on the law and legal requirements for telemarketers here [junkbusters.com]. Please note that should you violate the law and you run into someone sufficiently pissy (such as myself), such fsck-ups as NOT adding my name to your do-not-call list can be expensive (victims are entitled to sue for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense [i.e. you knew damn well what you were doing was wrong]...in most states you may sue for up to $1500 in small claims court (no lawyers required), most courts will give summary judgement in favour of the plaintiff if nobody from the telemarketing firm shows up, the court can send a summons to pay the fine Or Else, and court judgements in your favour look very nice in formal complaints to the FCC asking them to Please Shut The Mother-Fsckers Down. :)

    The second illegal practice is redlining--purposely blocking out low-income or minority neighbourhoods. (Yes, if you are dealing with finances at all, redlining is illegal in the US. Same if you're dealing in real estate, insurance, etc.--a bank here in Kentucky just got smacked rather hard because it was found that it was redlining low-income minority communities in terms of house loans.) Trust me that if it is ever found out by the feds your former company does this, they might end up not being able to so much as loan a homeless person two bucks for a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20. :) Redlining is still unfortunately common, but the authorities (such as HUD, federal banking regulators, etc.) are becoming far less tolerant of it.

    (As an aside--just FWIW, I'm merely writing as a Private Joe who has little tolerance for discrimination (I grew up in a low-income part of the Louisville metro area that was constantly being shat on by the city--literally being used as their dumping grounds for garbage and minimalls and the airport because they figured "the poor hicks in the south part ain't gonna bitch") and little to no tolerance for telemarketers (I literally don't accept calls from telemarketers and survey agencies unless it is from a survey agency that I have called first and who will give me stuff like free food, etc. for my time and trouble :)--even political surveys, I will deliberately give BS answers just to skew their statistics), not to mention junk mailers (I freely admit to using spamtrap names and/or addresses if I must give personal info out--both for email AND snail-mail). Unless you REALLY make it worth my time, don't bother contacting me--if I want to get a service from you, I'll contact you, thank you. :)

    (Part of why I am so pissy on this is I've had to deal with Bad Telemarketers like Chemlawn, who literally refused to get off the phone even after I had told them five times that I was not interested, I wanted on their do-not-call list, and I actually WANTED weeds to grow in my yard because I was setting up a nature sanctuary (!). AND they had the audacity to call back a week later, upon which I asked to speak to their supervisor and gave them an earful. They have not called back since.)

    It's rather easy to keep from getting telemarketing calls:

    1) Use the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list, please remove me from any lists you may sell to other telemarketing agencies, and please mail me a copy of your do not call policy." (The last two are important, because they show you aren't fscking about and it gives the telemarketers more rope to hang themselves by. :)

    2) If they get pissy or call you afterwards, ask to speak to the manager (after getting the telemarketer's name, of course). Explain the law to the manager, and ask him at each point if he is aware that:

    He must maintain a do-not-call list for 10 years

    He must maintain a do-not-call policy and send it on request

    He must remove your name from lists sold to other telemarketing agencies on request

    He must not call before 9 am local time or after 9 pm local time

    If they do not do the above, they are liable under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for $500 per offense, $1500 per "willful" offense (they knew what they were doing).

    Then state, clearly, the spiel in 1) above and state that you are putting them on notice that if they don't send the do-not-call policy and/or they call you at ALL in the next ten years, you will be taking them to small claims court for willful violation of the TCPA. Document all this info including time of the call, etc.

    3) If they are the least bit naughty to you (i.e. they call again, fail to mail a do-not- call policy, etc.) then sue the bastards. :) Most telemarketers won't show up in court, it costs anywhere from free to around fifty dollars to file a case in small claims court, and you get anywhere from $500 to $1500 per offense--in a way, it really IS a way to "make money fast". :) Courts will handle collections, by the way--if they don't pay, they suddenly become more in trouble (read: contempt of court--in the worst case, the CEOs can be jailed till they pay up).

    4) Investigate your state's telemarketing laws and see if there's even MORE stuff you can use against them. (In Kentucky, for instance, there are actual CRIMINAL penalties for violating the laws--we also have stricter time-of-day requirements (no calls before 10 am), a statewide "do-not-call" list maintained by the Attorney-General that uses "asterisked-numbers" listed in the phone book, and it is illegal to telemarket using a recording (you MUST speak to a live human within five seconds of the call, or they just broke Kentucky law).) Check with your Attorney-General's office, or look under your state's name and "consumer protection".

    5) There are some phone services very useful in avoiding telemarketers (and in some cases, tracing just WHERE they got your name). Availability varies from state to state--check with your telco. Among them:

    Having your phone listing under an obviously false pseudonym (Joe Dredd, Fred Flintstone, George Jetson, etc.)

    Unpublished numbers--more expensive but invaluable in not only avoiding a lot of telemarketing calls but also in tracing the sellers of numbers--some telemarketers actually buy their number lists from the phone company. (It is a good idea in general to explicitly inform the phone company that you want on their do-not-call list and you want your name removed from all lists they sell to other parties.)

    Various Caller ID packages such as Anonymous Call Block (in some areas it DOES block telemarketers--in Kentucky, for instance, they have to provide a number on Caller ID by law), Unknown Number Verification (dial a number before you can talk to the person), etc.

    In some states, like Florida and Kentucky, there are statewide do-not-call lists. Call your telco or Attorney-General's office for more info.

    6) Junkbuster's Telemarketer's Script [junkbusters.com] is invaluable for documenting telemarketing calls (among other things, it lists the questions you need to ask if you want to "make money fast" from telemarketers if/when they misbehave ;). For that matter, the entire telemarketing section [junkbusters.com] is invaluable IMHO. (A wee note--I'm not entirely unbiased. I've had very good results, even at my old place, with their tips--I happen to be the client they're quoting. ;) This was at a residence that'd get 4-10 telemarketing calls a DAY, mind--getting them whittled to one or two a week was a major accomplishment, one done largely through Junkbuster's tips. Oh, and BTW, their script IS GPL'd--you can tweak it to your liking (to include state laws, etc.) as long as you give 'em credit.)

    7) There are actual devices, such as one sold by Public Citizen, that basically have a button one can press to automagically give the "add my number to your do not call list" spiel. (By Grud, they use machines like predictive dialers--why shouldn't you? ;) Most of these are around $30 US or so--links here (for Phone Butler) [phonebutler.com] or here (for Phone Filter [prefonefilter.com]. There are several devices of this type around, some even being sold at stores like Service Merchandise and Sears--shop around.

    8) If you've got Winblows (or Wine--I see no real reason why it couldn't work unde Wine) you might take a look at Engima [verinet.com], which is a nice little proggie to let you fill out the script on computer. (There is a Mac version linked from the site; I see no reason why a Linux version couldn't possibly be developed somehow.)

    9) The ultimate in deterrance of telemarketers (at least if you've got ADSL or cable-modem service) is probably doing away with the landline and getting a cell phone. Telemarketing calls to cell phones are illegal in the US, and most areas give cell phones their own exchanges so that telemarketers can filter them out.

    Again--these are just tactics (well, besides 7-9; I run Linux, like the pleasure of bitching out the telemarketers myself, and neither Insight@Home nor Hellsouth ADSL are much of options--I'm waiting for more competition in Louisville's ADSL market because I can get it cheaper than through Hellsouth) I've used, and quite successfully--if you start these at the moment you get a phone line, and adopt a "zero tolerance" policy towards telemarketers, you CAN eventually wipe out telemarketing calls from your lines altogether. (No, I am not making this up. On my (unpublished, Caller-ID-enabled, anon-call-blocked, statewide-do-not-call-listed, with-me-leading-the-war-on-telemarketers on the other end armed with Junkbusters script in hand should they get through THAT flotilla of "leave me alone" deterrance) I've actually succeeded in making it where I don't get telemarketing calls. It helps a lot that Kentucky does have additional laws; it also helps that the numbers are unpublished (they can't even get them through Directory Assistance--the only way they get them is if Hellsouth sells the numbers) and the three companies that have had the audacity to telemarket these numbers in the year I've had them got it made COMPLETELY plain that I do not want calls, EVER, and I entirely mean to clue-by-four them into submission should they ever forget that. ;) It IS possible to live free from Telemarketing Hell, though. (One must sometimes be a bitch, yes. Sometimes bitchiness is necessary. Most get the point with just 1), though. The later steps are for if they have proven themselves Naughty, like Chemlawn or the company mickonline apparently worked for. ;)

  • Right, but the problem is that the harassment has already taken place when you receive the FIRST phone call. It should be an "opt-in" situation rather than an "opt-out" procedure.

    The other problem is that I have two roomies. I can't ask for their names to be removed legally, so I get stuck receiving the same phone call from the same company 15 times until they do reach my roomie. Sure, I could claim to be him, and ask that they stop calling, etc. but I'm sure that I'd do that only to find it was someone calling to offer him a job or somesuch, and I'd look like an ass. :)

    For the last week, I have had a new service from US Worst, er West, that forces anyone who has their caller ID information blocked to speak their name and push a button. Then my phone rings with a distinctive ring, and I hear their name, and can opt to take the call or not. You can also put 25 numbers on a list to let through, if your parents have an unlisted number, etc.

    The result? We've gotten only one telemarketing call in the last week, and that was from the University that I work asking my roomie to donate to the senior class project. They got through because the caller ID said "University of Northern Iowa". This is a DRAMATIC decrease from what was three calls per day before getting the service.

    I don't work for US West, or hold any stock or anything stupid like that, and this is kind of pricey at $10 a month, but that includes caller ID service too, which is nice if you don't have it already. Since most of the telemarketers have automatically dialed phones, they can't get through the speak your name and push a button ordeal to reach us, which is just fine with me.
    ---

  • SPAM traps. (Score:3)

    by Poe ( 12710 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:46AM (#1125718) Homepage
    I like the idea of SPAMtraps. Leaving an email address on a web page (and nowhere else) with explicit instructions that the use of this email address costs the sender $500. When you receive email on that account file a claim in small claims court. Either the spammer will have to defend themselves, or they will have to give you money. Both of these cost the spammer money and discourage spamming.
  • Once, when I had Jury duty I went to McDonalds for breakfast. While I was there I saw a man standing at the pay phone with a moderate sized day planner looking device. He speed dialed number after number while I waited for my McMuffins and as I ate them. The next day he was there again, same time, same place.

    Although I couldn't hear him it was apparant that he was a telemarketer. It's my theory that using a pay phone was enough to get *something* to appear on caller ID, and since it was a pay phone all he had to do was move to another location and you'd have a bitch of a time proving that it was the same guy/company calling you again.

    How do you pass such a law? How do you enforce it? A cop listening in on every phone call?

    What will stop this COLD IN IT'S TRACKS is this. I'll share with you the tools of my one man crusade against telemarketers.

    1. NEVER BUY ANYTHING-if they have to spend more money on calls and people to make them than they recoup then they'll stop using that method.

    2. Keep them on the phone as long as possible. If you can play with them, get them to go over everything time and time again they have less time to move on to more fertile ground. I have a friend whose personal best is 24 minutes. Mine is closer to 10.

    3. As bad as it may sound, don't even give to charities when they use telemarketers. The ends can NOT justify the means, ever, even if they're the good guys.

    4. Make them think that you're going to buy something, when they start asking for your information, reverse it on them. Ask for their name, employer, employer's address and employer's telephone number. Say it's because you're afraid of fraud. When they give you this information, write it down.

    5. After you get all of their information tell them that you do not wish to ever be contected by them again, remind that that according to US federal law they can be held liable for up to $500 if they call you again.

    6. Get Caller ID. When you see "Anonymous Call" or "Out of Area" be prepared to deal with a telemarketer.

    I'm not naive, I know that most people will not do these things, but it's not the point if I can do my part I'm happy.

    LK

  • Re:Technical Solutions for Technical Problems (Score:3)

    by orpheus ( 14534 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @10:52AM (#1125720)
    I note you have an .edu address

    I hardly get any spam on my .edu address, neither do my other faculty relatives. And what we get is traceable, as you noted.

    I guess they think we're poor students and not worth the effort.

    Now, on my .com addresses, I get dozens of spams per day per primary account. And since I own my own domain, I use traceable addresses whenever I think a source might be harvested, so I know who leaked it or where it was harvested from.

    Let me tell you, they aren't at all reasonable. I get tons of spam for addresses at my domain that haven't been active for five years or more (I've been around a while), even though those addresses are set to 'bounce' all incoming as undeliverable

    I also get "shotgun" mail. That's mail sent to addresses that *never* existed on my site [e.g. they send mail to admin@, charles@, and even porn@ at a long list of domains, hoping someone 'lives' there]

    I can only imagine how many 'not even close' (shotgun, dead) spams clog any typical ISP. What do they care? They forge their return address -- it's fire and forget.


    __________

  • Re:Don't-call lists mostly work (Score:3)

    by vitaflo ( 20507 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @02:27PM (#1125721) Homepage
    I don't have caller ID, so I also go by the two second pause rule, however there was one time I hung up on a friend (whoops!).

    One problem I have, is that when I move, somehow my phone number is a big target (perhaps cuz it's a new number that's listed by the telco?). The last time I moved I got phone calls every night. After two months they stoped (I don't really get many anymore). I have no idea if this works, but this is what I did:

    The telemarketer always askes for a person by name, but ALWAYS screws mine up (how hard is it to pronounce "Gustafson" anyway? Doesn't anyone watch Grumpy Old Men? ;). If a person doesn't know my name, I don't know them, and know it's a marketer. So I just say "Um, you must have the wrong number, nobody by that name lives here". I'm assuming that if they can't match the name to the number, the number in effect is useless and they toss it from their system. Perhaps I'm wrong (or just lucky) but it's seemed to work for me.

    -Brent
  • US West really has brass ones, selling "privacy products" when their network is at the same time allowing telemarketers to opt out of caller ID broadcast. Sure, you can set your caller ID to "blocked" when you dial out, but not to "unknown". It made a little sense back when Caller ID was less universal, but I see a phone number these days even for out-of-state calls, but for telemarketers it's still "Name Unknown, Number Unknown". US West makes money on both sides; pretty damn sleazy.

  • DDoS vs. Spam (Score:3)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:46AM (#1125723) Journal
    Spam and DDoS are two fundamentally different activities. DDoS is malicious in intent, and has no constructive purpose. Spam is a form of (very obnoxious) advertising, and does have a legitimate purpose (I'm not saying the ends justify the means, though).

    DDoS is AFAIK (IANAL ;-) already illegal. Spam is kinda illegal in some places, but different laws should apply to each.

    I personally think that we should just maintain a database of the home phone numbers and addresses of the execs of all companies responsible for spam, and politely call them (once) for each piece of spam they send, asking them to stop. Nothing illegal about that, and they get a taste of their own medicine... Anyone volunteer to collect the data and maintain the database?

  • We already have laws against phone harrassment (Score:3)

    by mlogan ( 81677 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:37AM (#1125724) Homepage
    to the best of my knowledge, if you tell a telemarketer to take your name of their list, they are obligated by law to do so. If they call again after you have told them this, I believe you can take them to small claims court for about $500.

    The laws are there, they just aren't being enforced.

    Mark

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @12:30PM (#1125725)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • What reality are you guys in? (Score:3)

    by ATKeiper ( 141486 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @10:12AM (#1125726) Homepage
    (1) "We now have fledgling laws against unsolicited commercial e-mail... [W]e now have protections from SPAM.

    What? That's totally wrong, at least in the U.S. No laws have been passed by Congress restricting spam, and the few state laws that have been passed have been thrown out by the courts as violating constitutional free speech protections. Cliff, what protections do you think you have against spam? There are none. Please, I beg you, prove me wrong - log onto Thomas [loc.gov] and find a law that protects you from spam.

    (2) "Just wondering if the laws under which the U.S. Government is pursuing the DDoS attacks on Yahoo! and Amazon could be applied to telemarketers."

    No, the laws being used to "pursue" the DDOS attackers are actually more akin to laws that would apply to grafitti artists or arsonists. They are not laws about "using a public network to bother end users."

    As others have noted here, the technology is improving (in some areas) to combat telemarketers. And the technology to combat spam is improving, too. But there are bigger worries than these nuisances - and we should be more concerned about more important personal information [tecsoc.org] than our e-mail addresses and our phone numbers.

    (3) "Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?"

    No, no and no. "Congress shall make no law," the First Amendment tells us, to abridge the freedom of speech. That first amendment protects lots of things that are odious to many people - including, despite the best efforts of some wrong-headed Members of Congress, flag burning.

    Imagine that a law is written preventing unsolicited commercial calls. What happens if I accidentally dial your phone number in an attempt to complete a solicited commercial call - can you prosecute me? What other forms of communication should be regulated next? Perhaps TV ads, for destroying your tranquility and peace of mind by letting commercialism interfere with your entertainment?

    There are already strict laws regulating what you can say and spend in political campaigns. There are already strict laws in some areas against billboards. But how far do you want to go to abridge others' right to communicate - all in the name of avoiding a nuisance?

    A. Keiper
    The Center for the Study of Technology and Society [tecsoc.org]
    Washington, D.C.

  • Re:An idea I had (Score:4)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:54AM (#1125727) Homepage Journal
    You can already do that, but you have to do it yourself.

    Telemarketers use computers that detect answering machines (based on tape hiss and such). If you had a phone that put out such noise for the first second or so, telemarketing calls would simply hang up.

  • Blocked Caller ID's (Score:4)

    by marko_ramius ( 24720 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:43AM (#1125728)
    In my area (Chicago) the telco is offering a new(ish) service where any caller who's phone number is NOT presented by caller id is asked to introduce themselves via a short recording. THEN your phone rings and you hear the recording. You are then given the option (via touch tone keys) to accept the call, reject the call, or reject the call informing the caller you don't want to hear from them again (to be used in the case of a telemarketer).

  • SS7 (Score:4)

    by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 ) <tms&infamous,net> on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @10:37AM (#1125729) Homepage
    Does the Plain Old Telephone System have the installed equipment to combat telemarketers?
    Yes. This is not your father's POTS.
    I know that you can trace a call, but how fast can that be done?
    Instantly. In fact, they don't really trace calls anymore, all the information come in with the call setup request.
    On the Internet, you have IP's that may or may not be spoofed, but unless you pay a premium for callerID, you don't have that luxury with telephone.
    You can't get the info without paying the phone company their premium, but they have that info. (At least in almost all parts of the US and Canada. YMMV.) Telephone switches are connected to each other not just with voice lines, but with data lines that form the SS7 (Signaling System 7) packet-switched network. This network carries messages that instruct the switches to set up and tear down voice connections. (Yes, the connections could be dial-up data connections with modems but that doesn't matter at this level.)

    The basic idea of SS7 is reasonably simple; it's a protocol to tell telephone switches how to connect voice lines together to make a voice circuit. The implementation, however, is very complicated (because of over a century's worth of cruft) and will hurt your brain. Anyway, one of the message fields in a call setup is the telephone number that originated the call.

    If you pay the telephone company for Caller ID, they'll send you that info modulated onto the ring signal (unless the caller has requested Caller ID blocking); or if you dial a certain code (*57? I forget) immediately after a harassing call they'll record the number and pass it on to the police. People with toll-free numbers also get a list of the calling numbers.

    The "keep them on the line so we can trace the call" bit you see on cop shows predates the use of computer-controlled digital switches. Forget about it. The call is "traced" before the it is even connected.

  • The two-second turnover time. (Score:4)

    by devphil ( 51341 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @10:25AM (#1125730) Homepage
    Another very effective technique keys on the fact that it's a computer that's actually doing the calling. If your telephone picks up and starts talking constantly, then the computer knows it has an answering machine and disconnects.

    But if your telephone picks up, says something brief ("Hello?") and waits, then the computer knows it has reached a victi^H^H^H^H^Hhuman, and transfers the line over to a human telemarketer. The time it waits for silence plus the transfer time is just over two seconds.

    So pick up your phone, say hello, and if you don't get an answer in two seconds, hang up. I've been doing this for months and have never had any complaints from friends about accidentally hanging up on them -- two seconds in which to respond is a lot longer than it sounds. Every human-to-human call I've ever had has started off within that window of time.

    Is this rude to the telemarketers? Fuck 'em; they're the ones interrupting my dinner, my shower, my time with friends. (If I /do/ get trapped into talking with one, I am polite enough to say, "No thanks, I'm not interested," etc.)

  • wrong question (Score:4)

    by streetlawyer ( 169828 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:43AM (#1125731) Homepage
    Will laws be written to combat such behavior? Can such laws be written?

    Such laws will, eventually be written. Such laws can, trivially, be written. (Soviet Russia had no telemarketing problem)

    The question we ought to be asking is: when such laws are written, what other important freedoms will they be used to restrict?

    Since slashdot readers are, it would seem, quite keen on sending large volumes of email to people with different views on intellectual property law to themselves, you ought to be wary about this. If Be, Corel, and the Holland, Michigan Public Library system were to have access to such a law, then there could be trouble for all concerned.

    How inconvenient is it to deal with telemarketers? How inconvenient is it to live in a society with no free speech?

    I'll answer the second question for you; for a lot of the people on slashdot, it would not be inconvenient at all. No regime in history has put people in jail for mindlessly parroting the party line.

  • I've been thinking about putting together a page on telemarketing, I've been doing a lot of research and found out a lot of crap lately. I wish I had because there's no way I can post everything here!

    A few really crappy things about the telemarketing industry:

    1) They hire prisoners. I personally am not making any decision on the merit of this process, so let's not get into a big debate about that. The thing that I take exception to is that they don't really monitor these prisoners well and convicted rapists, etc are using these telemarketing companies to contact minors and attempt to establish a "relationship" of some form with them.

    I must admit I have a personal interest in this - my girlfriend (I'm 18, she's 16) was recently conned by a telemarketer (I've since seen the transcript of the conversation - this dude was SLICK...I think even a genius geek like myself might've fallen for it) who managed to get her name from her...he then used the data the telemarketing company gave him to write her a letter. Turns out this fellah is a convicted felon in the Utah State Pen...and this wasn't exactly a "Hi, how ya doin`, my name's Bob" sort of letter. Her mom saw it and freaked and has since contacted the Utah State Prison people...they've been really helpful, but the company that hires these prisoners, Sandstar (Who happens to run http://www.familyfilms.com of all sites!) has basically said "We're terribly sorry" and then continued business as usual - and this kind of stuff happens OFTEN. ABC News in Utah said they were interested in the story, but they wanted to finish up one they were already working on involving the same thing happening to a girl from Utah with another company & prison!

    2) This is the part that really pisses me off. Lots of people have posted about the "do not call lists" - this is a part of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (Which the FTC is currently reviewing - check http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/02/tsr.htm - they ARE accepting public comments via email but only until Thursday April 27th, 2000). The TSR means well but it's NOT WORKING. Try bringing up charges in a small claims court against a company for violating the TSR by calling you after you were asked to be placed on the do not call list. These companies disappear, change names, go under, merge, etc so often that by the time the case comes up, you have no hope of even getting the 500$. Plus they often use delaying tactics because by law after 24 months they can purge their records.

    The telemarketing industry is VERY screwed up. I have already put together a 10 page analysis of this all and the Telemarketing Sales Rule and all the problems with it but that might be a bit excessive to post here.

    OT: Anyone else noticed that is dying? I haven't seen that used much at all lately...it's just so much more versitile and less AOL-ish than :)

    Anywayz, I've posted my comment at:
    http://www.galahad.cx/FTCComment.html
    and the original message her mother sent out asking people to be wary of this practice at:
    http://www.galahad.cx/OriginalMessage.txt
    Please read them and feel free to email me about some of the efforts I'm organizing to get the Telemarketing Sales Rule patched up so that this and many other practices will at least be regulated. Or even email the FTC as detailed at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2000/02/tsr.htm with your comments sometime before April 27th - we can use all the help we can get. And the Telemarketing Sales Rule covers ALL aspects of telemarketing, so feel free to comment on anything and everything about it on your mind, just please don't flame them too much.

    Oh, and galahad.cx is my little 486 Linux box on a cable modem, so it might be kinda slow to respond at times. Sorry!

  • Opt-in marketing only (Score:5)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:51AM (#1125733) Homepage Journal
    Why not ban unsolicited commercial direct marketing? What would happen?

    Well, the US Post Office would get an exemption on the grounds that junk mail subsidises other mail (or at least it should; I'm not sure if it's really not the other way around).

    For phone, fax, and email direct marketing, a new business would be created. Consumers would get paid to opt-in. You could fill out a marketing demographic survey, and then you would get a credit on your phone bill paid for by the direct marketers who called you.

    With opt-in systems, consumers get paid for putting up with advertising. Those who don't want the advertising pay their own way. This is already happening with ISPs. This is also how TV works (you can get free TV with ads, or premium/rental services without).

  • getting rid of telemarketers (Score:5)

    by palerider ( 79211 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2000 @09:48AM (#1125734)
    actually, it's pretty easy. do not hang up, do not yell, do not curse... very nicely say "please put this number on your company wide 'do not call' list". http://www.junkbusters.com/ht/en/telemarketing.htm l [junkbusters.com] for a full explanation it works..

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