It's time for technology to catch up to telemarketers - Loveland Reporter-Herald

With the election looming and campaign messages coming at us by mail, email and telephone, it's no wonder some people feel a sense of annoyance or even dread lately any time the phone rings.

At one time, telephones helped connect people who wanted to talk to each other, and that's all they did.

Those days have disappeared.

Modern smartphones can do so much more: text messages, internet access, photography.

Many people don't even have landlines anymore. That may be because they aren't as versatile but may also be because of the huge intrusion they allow strangers to make into people's homes, not just during election season.

A recent story in the Orange County Register examined how, 13 years after the Do Not Call list started, people still get inundated by unwanted telemarketing calls and robocalls, those prerecorded sales calls delivered by autodialers.

They are the biggest complaint the Federal Communications Commission receives from the public, the newspaper said.

From November 2014 to November 2015, the agency reported it got more than 3.6 million complaints about companies making robocalls or calls after they were told to stop.

The unwanted calls bear a similarity to email spam, but the problem of unwanted emails has been going down as technological advances have helped screen it out.

---

Advertisement

---

Technology also exists that could weed out unwanted telephone calls, but few telecommunications companies are offering it.

Time Warner Cable offers a third-party service, Nomorobo, for free, letting its customers sign up to have their calls checked by that company's computer servers to screen out calls from known robocallers.

Other companies need to follow suit to let phone customers nationwide screen out unwanted calls.

It's not just a matter of reducing the inconvenience of dealing with unwanted calls.

The Orange County Register story noted Consumers Union estimates phone fraud cost people $350 million in 2011, the most recent figure available, and that U.S. residents lost $31 million between October 2013 and March 2016 to scammers who claimed to be Internal Revenue Service agents.

Many of the victims of phone fraud are elderly, with 80 percent of telemarketing scams said to target people age 65 and older.

Scammers no longer even have to be in this country. Technology lets them make international phone calls over internet lines. And being overseas, they don't care about compliance with the Do Not Call list.

The FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler brought together a task force in August with 30 telecommunications and technology firms including AT&T, Verizon, Google and Apple. "This scourge must stop," he told them.

The FCC offers tips for consumers that include making sure they are on the Do Not Call list and contacting their phone providers to request they offer technology to block unwanted calls.

Even robocalls from businesses to a landline require prior express written consent. Telemarketing robocalls to a landline home telephone based solely on an "established business relationship" established when purchasing something from a business or contacting the business to ask questions are not allowed, the FCC says.

Wireless phone users also have the right to be on the Do Not Call list, and the FCC says all "non-emergency robocalls, both telemarketing and informational, require a consumer's permission to be made to a wireless phone. These calls can include political, polling and other non-telemarketing robocalls."

The Do Not Call list worked well after its inception in 2003 for several years until technological advances let scammers and spammers get around it.

It's time for these telecommunications companies to employ the latest technology, too.

http://ift.tt/2eyKwjY