Its truly amazing how many robocalls were sent out over the past few weeks approaching the recent election. Unfortunately, these legal under the do not call laws. We’ve seen a huge increase of the calls at callcatalog.com Remember to report any unwanted calls and share your information with others.
November 8, 2009
September 30, 2009
The Top 11 Ways To Stop Politicians And Others From Contacting You At Home
From our guest blogger Shaun Dakin from StopPoliticalCalls.org …
Washington, DC – Shaun Dakin, CEO The National Political Do Not Contact Registry – Sign up for free at StopPoliticalCalls.org
The list that politicians, parties, vendors and candidates don’t want you to know about.
With the election season now hitting us like a Hurricane, particularly in battle ground states, The National Political Do Not Contact Registry presents the top 11 ways to stop politicians, vendors candidates, unions, PACs, 527’s, and local, state, and national party groups from contacting you at home either by phone or via the Internet.
The bottom line? With days to go until election day there is little that you can do now to stop John McCain, Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, George Bush, Bill Clinton, Megan Fox, Jack Nicholson, Jay Z or some other celebrity from calling you at home.
However, there are some things you can do now that will help as well as preparing for the next election cycle as well as stopping commercial marketers from invading your privacy.
1) Registering to Vote –> Don’t Do It, or Give The Minimum Information You Absolutely Need to Give
- When you register to vote DO NOT give the state your phone number. Leave it blank. Why? Because your state voter registration database, in most instances, is simply re-sold to the political establishment and that is the database that is used to contact you. ACTION: Re-register in your state and make sure that you remove your phone number(s) from the application.
- Political Party Affiliation. Don’t have one. Do not register as part of a political party. I know, that can disqualify you from voting in the primaries. But, if you don’t want a party to call you, don’t tell them you support them.
2) Learn the Law –> Some states ban robo calls, do you live in one of them?
- Yes, there are states that ban robo calls and do not exempt political calls. If you live in one of them, know the law, how to file a complaint, and follow through on the complaint.
- California is the biggest state with a robo call ban. If you live in CA, robo calls are illegal according to the California Public Utilities Code sections 2871-2876. We have set up a specific web page to help CA residents file a complaint and to learn more about the law.
- Other states include: OR, IN, MN, NJ and SC.
- We also have a form for MN residents:
3) Do Not Call Registries –> Make sure you are on ALL of them
- While political calls are often exempt from do not call registries, there are several states that use the either the Federal Do Not Call List or a state do not call list to enforce robo call bans (Oregon for example). At the very least, make sure you are on the Federal Do Not Call Registry and your own State Do Not Call Registry (as applicable, some states do not have their own).
- Sign up at the National Political Do Not Contact Registry. The NPDNC is a non-profit non-partisan advocacy organization that is working with politicians and parties to demand that they not call voters that sign up at StopPoliticalCalls.org. Currently 6 politicians have signed a “do not robo call” pledge as well as a leading robo calling vendor.
4) Contributing and Volunteering for Candidates –> Don’t, if you do not want to get unwanted contacts
- Bottom line? If you contribute or volunteer to a campaign or candidate and give them your phone number, email, and address you can expect to get non stop communications until election day.
- Opt-Out of Email: Most campaigns will allow you to quickly opt-out of email communications. It is much more difficult to get them to remove your phone numbers and mailing addresses. Visit their campaign websites to find out how to do so.
5) Tell the Campaigns To Stop Calling! –> In person, often, and via the phone
- In person communication works. Do it. Now.
- If you do not like getting unwanted phone calls from campaigns, tell them!
- Tell campaigns that you will not vote for the candidate if they do not stop calling
- Tell campaigns that you will not contribute if they do not stop calling
- Tell campaigns that you will write letters to the editor and tell all your friends not to vote for that candidate if they do not stop calling
- Make sure, again, that you know your state laws about political calls and demand that the enforcing authorities actually do their job –> Enforcing the existing laws!
6) Think Having a Cell Phone Exempts You From Getting Called? Think Again. –> Make sure that you never give campaigns your number(s).
- If you think that the law regulates political calls to cell phones, you are wrong. Period.
- If a campaign gets hold of your cell phone number (your voter registration, your contribution form, your volunteer application, etc..) they can call you on your cell phone anytime, anywhere, anyhow.
- Just because commercial organizations are banned from calling cell phones doesn’t mean that politicians are. Remember, politicians are exempt from most do not call registries. Just because you have a cell phone doesn’t mean that pols won’t call you.
7) Unlist Your Number(s) With Your Phone Company
- Yes, it costs a little extra. It is worth it. Unlist your number from the phone directory by calling your local phone provider and doing it now. Not only will it stop your ex-spouse from finding you, it will make it harder for politicians to find you as well.
8) Make Sure Google Unlists Your Number
- Few people realize that Google could have your phone number, name and address. Fewer people realize that Google makes it easy to unlist it for free. Click here to do so.
9) Consumer Marketing Do Not XYZ Lists. –> Join them now.
- The Direct Marketing Association has a website that lists the following services. We recommend that you sign up for all of them. NOTE: Some cost money.
- Credit Card Offers. The CC industry has a credit card offer opt out service at:
10) Get Caller ID –> You’ll know if it is Grandma Calling, but You’ll still be woken up at 3 AM
- Again, this service often costs a little extra. It is worth it so that when you see a number that you do not recognize on your Caller ID screen you can make the choice not to answer it.
- It does not help, however, with stopping the phone from actually ringing and waking you and your family up.
11) Internet Advertising Op-Out Services –> If you do not want to be micro-targeted by the campaigns, do not let them know who you are and where you are when you are online.
- Network Advertising Initiative opt out (NAI opt out). Click here to learn more and take action.
11 1/2) Educate Yourself –> AARP and Google have teamed up to create a great site full of useful content to learn about everything you need to know about protecting yourself online.
- You can click here to link directly to the Google’s Privacy Channel. At the site you’ll learn all about the following through easy to view YouTube video:
- Search Privacy
- Firewalls
- Password protection
- Unlisting phone numbers
- Cookies
We are sure that there are other ways to stop unwanted political communications. Please let us know in the comment section and we’ll be sure to update the list as we learn of more options.
Washington, DC – Shaun Dakin, CEO The National Political Do Not Contact Registry – Sign up for free at StopPoliticalCalls.org
May 15, 2009
Auto Warranty Spamming Telemarketers in Hot Water – FTC
Get a recent call from a telemarketer telling you that your auto warranty has expired. I did, which I blogged about not long ago. I heard, “this is the second time we have called you that your car warranty has expired”. They called me on my home, work, and even cell phones — all of which are unlisted and on the do not call list. It appears that the telemarketers were using fake caller-id’s, which is a big no-no. In fact, they used the phone numbers to call people (well fake phone numbers) that really belonged to other people.
The two companies, Voice Touch Inc. and Transcontinental Warranty Inc., were named in a lawsuit filed in the Chicago District court by the ftc, who is seeking injunctions to their telemarketing efforts. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz called it “one of the most aggressive” telemarketing schemes the agency has ever seen.
The laws state that a telemarketer must use their real phone number (not a fake one) and also provide you a means to be removed from the phone number database. Unfortunately, they didn’t comply with either. They also, didn’t even think to use the do not call list to filter their phone number directory.
May 10, 2009
May 7, 2009
Annoying Telemarketer Gets Pulled Out of Closet
Many people have been complaining recently about getting these calls from random phone numbers saying “your warranty is about to expire”, or “you have just a few months left on your car warranty”. Appears some folks at reddit were complaining about this as well and actually found the culprit. Yesterday, they somehow found the real information about the telemarketer company and started calling it including hacking into their voice mail system and listing the different extensions. Unfortunately, there were apparently quite a few unhappy callers who had left messages asking for refunds … as of today the main phone number is disconnected.
Here are a few excerpts of their discussions there:
As the 800 number was reporting disconnected, I called (949) 475-9500, pressed zero for an operator and asked to speak to a manager. They passed me to Customer Service. Phone rang for about 5 minutes then I got “Jeremy.” I asked to have my cell # removed from their call list and he said he’d take care of it. Then I asked for his name and direct contact number. he told me: Jeremy, 1-800-499-4116, extension 467.
just got a call from their auto dialer 10 minutes ago, so they’re still up to it. I pressed 1 to connect to an agent and he picked up after about 10 seconds. I told him to stop calling me and he just hung up the phone.
They list all of the commands for the voicemail system. Unfortunately for these folks people should be more vigilent when getting and trusting a telemarketer.
May 6, 2009
402-982-0669 keeps calling — do a reverse lookup
If you look on CallCatalog.com at some of the more recent posts you’ll see that there are many phone numbers where there are repeat callers. These unwanted callers are dialing different individuals. For example 402-982-0669 has quite a few complaints on this number, you can use a reverse phone directory to identify who the caller is and also post a complaint. There are many other phone numbers that can be looked up and found that are calling many other people and bothering them.
Unfortunately, the FTC’s do not call list is a good place to post a complaint but its not a reverse phone directory where you can lookup a phone number. Its only one way. The best two way directory are some of the public ones that allow people to find out who is calling them and also allows them to post a complaint.
April 20, 2009
CallCatalog.com just given a great review
April 14, 2009
Privacy Rights Continue to be an Issue
I was reading the news today and noticed that there were a significant number of articles related to personal privacy. This is an unfortunate circumstance of the data-sharing environment we live in. As data is used and shared, scammers, unwanted callers, and other people will call you from an unknown phone number. They may use your private information to do unethical things. For example, electronic medical records are a rapidly evolving technology. They’re supposed to make the doctor’s work easier. However, this raises privacy concerns that a dishonest person could hack into the system to steal your private information. Additionally, its much easier to share this information with other businesses or individuals to invade your privacy.
Then who knows what the repurcussions would be. One I’m sure of is that people may call you from unknown phone numbers with more information in hand. Its always very important that you NEVER give out any private information when someone calls you. And as always, when they do call you can get information on them when you do a lookup at a free reverse phone directory.
March 27, 2009
New Ways to Annoy You: Telemarketers Still S((*^%
I came across a blog the other day by TwinSpeak that gave me a chuckle. They received a phone call from a telemarketer who tried to influence them to “save money”. The telemarketer starts off, “Hi I’m Bob, would you like to save money?” Who wouldn’t, right? So the obvious answer is “yes”. But inevitably they want you to spend money to save money. The scam never ends. They don’t want to let you off the line, or even allow you to say “no” so the postive questions continue until the moment of truth. “We can lower your interest rate if you Often times these folks will call your phone number back day after day trying to get in touch with you. Sometimes they leave messages and other times they don’t.
I always advise people to never answer the phone for an unknown number on the caller id, you don’t know who it is, so if its important they’ll leave a message. When you get these calls, you can always do a lookup on them with a reverse phone directory. This will allow you to figure out who they are, and even decide to call them back if their voicemail is garbled or inspecific about what they want.
March 20, 2009
FTC recently asked to investigate Google’s Privacy Breach
Google found a bug in their google docs product that allows some users to see documents they shouldn’t. Given Google’s vast influence, this is a big deal. Just like if Microsft found a major privacy issue within Windows or office. Google announced this on March 7th on a blog they posted. They said its only a very small number of users.
As we advance our use of the internet its only expected that more and more people will place private items on the internet. The goal of the big companies is to protect it. If not, our privacy is at risk.