We all hate phone spam. Republican fake cost-benefit analysis: prosecuting spammers costs too much. Yes, for just one prosecution. But a systematic program of prosecution would get all of those who take the financial and other penalties seriously out of the “business”, and reduce it to a minor nuisance at the level of junk fax. One-step, single idea analysis is always wrong. We must always consider further steps in the chain of cause and effect, aka karma.
At the height of junk fax, fax machines were tied up continuously, and legitimate business and communications could not get through. Being able to fax back a bill for damages cut that way, way down. All-electronic fax then did away with jammed up fax printing machines.
Yes, spammers can just get new e-mail addresses or phone numbers, but as long as their service providers have to take their billing addresses, and they have to provide real financial contacts to their marks in order to get paid, we can just penalize them again and again.
Did you know that when you get a junk fax, you can fax back a bill for statutory damages, and take the sender to small claims court? Some people thought that they could make a living doing that for others, but junk fax dried up too quickly for that to be viable. Those who got dinged told everybody else who the dingers were, to begin with, but then it just got to be too much for the whole “business”.
Did you know that you can tell a phone spammer to pay up, and go to small claims court to collect? And that you can get someone else to do it for you?
Oh, yes. This is where the story really starts.
Can I sue a telemarketer? Read this before you file a robocall lawsuit
Some robocalls and telemarketing calls are legal, if they come from companies you have dealt with and given permission to. I get robocalls from my pharmacy when my medications are ready for pickup. I get robocalls from local government about emergencies and missing persons. That’s fine with me. Robocalls from non-profits, and political robocalls, are generally legal, but they have to give you a way to opt out. Legitimate businesses rarely use robocalls to sell, because they anger potential customers so much.
Then there are the scammers, who don’t care how many people they anger, as long as we don’t rise in a body with the proverbial torches and pitchforks to recover damages, and put them out of business so hard they can’t come back.
Now, you may not feel that it is worth the effort to deal with a minor nuisance. For some, it is not so minor, with dozens of bogus calls every day. For those who have been seriously bilked, it is not minor at all. So let us consider whether it is worth while to help protect everyone else. It won’t take a huge number of us, distributed around the country, but some of us would have to keep at it.
I have left this problem alone for a long time, because of more urgent issues, but the bogus Medicare and fake warranty and “We have billed you hundreds of dollars” scammers have gotten to me lately, and also I have more online followers than I used to. Not a huge amount, as these things go, but enough for me to give it a try.
My mobile phone service comes with an app called Hiya that lets me know of calls from any numbers in its database that have been flagged as phone spammers. I report calls to them fairly regularly, and I don’t answer calls that they flag any more.
Anti-spam techniques
Robocall
National Do Not Call Registry
Many journalists and victims of fraudulent calls and Do-Not-Call violations have extensively documented ongoing and widespread inaction and lack of enforcement by the FTC.[17]
The program has proved quite popular: as of 2007, according to one survey, 72 percent of Americans had registered on the list, and 77 percent of those say that it made a large difference in the number of telemarketing calls that they receive (another 14 percent report a small reduction in calls). Another survey, conducted less than a year after the Do Not Call list was implemented, found that people who registered for the list saw a reduction in telemarketing calls from an average of 30 calls per month to an average of 6 per month.[20]
Services
I note the existence of these services. I have not tried them or investigated them, so I make no recommendations about them. If you know something, say something.
Is Robocalling Illegal?
Morgan & Morgan is handling lawsuits on behalf of consumers who received unwanted calls from debt collectors, banks and other companies on their cell phones. Under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) individuals must provide express consent to receive certain types of calls and have the right to tell these companies, including debt collectors, to stop calling. For each unwanted call, a consumer may be able to collect between $500 and $1,500.
New App Allows Users to Automatically Generate TCPA Suits
A new app called Robo Revenge goes as far as to give individuals “burner” credit cards that are being used to gather information in order to automatically file Telephone Consumer Protection Act lawsuits against companies calling individuals’ cell phones without their consent.
The app is the brainchild of Joshua Browder, who also created DoNotPay, dubbed the world’s “first robot lawyer,” where it is actually a legal services chatbot that helps users fight parking tickets, cancel subscriptions, and file small claims court lawsuits.