Do Not Call
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in a joint effort with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have established the national Do-Not-Call registry. Consumers that no longer wish to receive unwanted telemarketing calls can register their telephone number to the registry and then this list will be provided to telemarketers, who will then be prohibited from calling those numbers.
In theory, it’s a good idea to put an end to unwanted telemarketing calls. But for this specific plan to work, one must first assume that no one in the government or corporate world will abuse their access to this information. We have seen firsthand how the corporate world responds to repeated consumer requests for unsolicited commercial e-mail from filling our online mailboxes. If there is a loophole in the law, the corporate world will find it. And considering that political organizations and non-profit groups are exempt from the current revisons to the law, it’s not difficult to imagine this registry of information finding its way into the wrong hands.
Perhaps I’m just too cynical, but the idea of giving a telephone number to the Fed so that they can make a registry of numbers that telemarketers can’t call seems to be doing things backwards. Although over 26.3 million telephone numbers have already been registered, this number is only a small fraction of the total number of telephones in this country, which means that the vast majority will remain available to telemarketing calls. If the FCC and FTC seriously want to put a halt to such calls, they should reverse the process and devise a Call Me Registry. With such a registry, the consumers that want to receive telemarketing calls would register their numbers, and telemarketers could only call these people.