{"id":597,"date":"2009-09-03T13:27:09","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T11:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=597"},"modified":"2015-04-04T13:29:38","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T11:29:38","slug":"putting-a-stop-to-robocalls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/putting-a-stop-to-robocalls\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting a stop to robocalls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Silveira was <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70c5fd\">fed up<\/span>. Twice a day last May, he answered his <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70c9e5\">cell phone<\/span>, only to hear a recording from a company trying to sell him an extended <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70cdcd\">warranty<\/span> on his car.<\/p>\n<p>Silveira didn&#8217;t own a car.<\/p>\n<p>Worse, in America, cell phone owners <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70d1b5\">share<\/span> the cost of <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70d59d\">incoming calls<\/span>. So by answering the phone, Silveira was helping to pay for his own <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70d986\">harassment<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>He could have <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70dd6d\">sued<\/span> \u2014 it&#8217;s illegal for telemarketers to call US cell phone numbers \u2014 but instead the 22-year-old laboratory technician decided to <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70e154\">get even<\/span>. Using information <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70e53c\">posted<\/span> at Reddit.com, Silveira found phone numbers for Auto One, the company selling the car warranties. He called Auto One and left long <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70e924\">voice-mail messages<\/span> consisting of Rick Astley&#8217;s &#8220;Never Gonna Give You Up&#8221; \u2014 a British pop song from 1987 that, to American ears, sounds particularly <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70ed0c\">cloying<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/dczwxWnlbvM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Enough other harrassed phone owners joined in the &#8220;Rickrolling&#8221; that their messages <a title=\"Peeved at Auto-Warranty Calls, a Web Posse Strikes Back (Wall Street Journal)\" href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB124234497033421649.html\" target=\"_blank\">blocked the company&#8217;s entire phone system<\/a>. Some even hacked into it and changed Auto One&#8217;s own messages. Someone found the company president&#8217;s home phone number and made it a <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70f0fa\">target<\/span> as well.<\/p>\n<p>Americans are bombarded with advertising like no other people on Earth \u2014 but at least the TV and radio can be turned off. For about 20 years, it&#8217;s been a <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70f4dd\">running joke<\/span> \u2014 and something I&#8217;ve <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70f8c4\">witnessed<\/span> during numerous visits \u2014 that you&#8217;ll just be sitting down to dinner when a telemarketer will call you. (Well, that&#8217;s when you&#8217;re at home!)<\/p>\n<p>Some people try to <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f70fcab\">fight back<\/span> by <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f710094\">feigning<\/span> interest and getting connected to a <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f71047c\">human operator<\/span>, whom they involve in a <a title=\"Telemarketing Counter-script (in 10 languages)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.xs4all.nl\/~egbg\/counterscript.html\" target=\"_blank\">long, irrelevant conversation<\/a> in order to waste the company&#8217;s time and money. But &#8220;robocalls&#8221; are very cheap \u2014 $2,000 buys 100,000 of them \u2014 and some people do buy from the businesses being advertised.<\/p>\n<p>The biggest help came in 2004 with the National Do Not Call Registry, a government list of phone owners who don&#8217;t want to receive telephone advertising. The Registry&#8217;s <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f710865\">exemption<\/span> of robocalls, however, may have <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f710c4d\">contributed to<\/span> their increased use.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"tooltip551fc9f711034\">As of<\/span> this week, however, hope is in the air, thanks to <a title=\"FTC to Ban Most Telemarketing 'Robocalls' (Wall Street Journal)\" href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB125139232187564101.html\" target=\"_blank\">a new law<\/a> that makes most robocalls illegal. Only those who have agreed to receive such calls may receive them.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, there&#8217;s no rule without an exception. Politicians and <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f71141c\">survey-takers<\/span> are still allowed to make such calls. They can be <a title=\"Regulating Robocalls: Are Automated Calls the Sound of, or a Threat to, Democracy? (Study by Jason C. Miller)\" href=\"http:\/\/papers.ssrn.com\/sol3\/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1309780\" target=\"_blank\">just as bad<\/a> as the telemarketers, when they call at inconvenient times or spread false or misleading information.<\/p>\n<p>As with so many things, <i>The Simpsons<\/i> hit the nail on the head. In <a title=\"Lisa's Date with Density (Simpsons episode) (Wikipedia)\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lisa%27s_Date_with_Density\" target=\"_blank\">an episode from 1996<\/a>, Homer Simpson finds a machine that will automatically <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f711ba5\">dial<\/span> phone numbers and play a <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f711bed\">recorded<\/span> message. He programs the machine to call every number in Springfield, suggesting to those who answer that they send him a dollar.<\/p>\n<p>It is a harmless enough idea, bringing in a bit of <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f711fd3\">spare cash<\/span> for our <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f7123ba\">hapless<\/span> hero, until people receive the same call for the fifth or sixth time, even late at night. The citizens of Springfield force Homer to stop the robocalls. He then reprograms the machine to call everyone to apologize. If they can forgive him, the new message says, they should send him a dollar.<\/p>\n<p>I say send over Rick Astley instead. <span id=\"tooltip551fc9f7127a5\">In person<\/span>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Silveira was fed up. Twice a day last May, he answered his cell phone, only to hear a recording from a company trying to sell him an extended warranty on his car. Silveira didn&#8217;t own a car. Worse, in America, cell phone owners share the cost of incoming calls. So by answering the phone, Silveira was helping to pay <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/putting-a-stop-to-robocalls\/\">&#8230; >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[189,72,141,79,82],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":599,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597\/revisions\/599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}