RNC, Chamber Of Commerce Want Robocallers To Be Able To Spam Your Voicemail Without Your Phone Ringing
from the the-evolution-of-annoyance dept
The GOP’s leading campaign and fundraising arm, the Republican National Committee, has thrown its support behind an initiative that could allow marketing firms and robocallers to spam your voicemail inbox -- without your phone ever ringing. Under former FCC boss Tom Wheeler, the agency notably ramped up its assault on annoying robocalls. That included some particularly notable pressure on AT&T, which for years had provided a rotating crop of excuses as to why its customers continued to get hammered by phone marketers even if included on the National Do Not Call Registry.
Under current law, marketers aren't allowed to annoy you via your cellular phone unless you give your express, written consent. In the hopes of boosting revenues without running afoul of the law, the industry has begun pushing for exemptions in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for "ringless voicemail," which would allow a company to leave you a marketing message in your voicemail, without your phone ringing. Of course you'd be hard-pressed to find a single consumer that thinks this is a good idea, which is apparently why the current FCC is exploring precisely this option:
"Back in March, a marketing firm called All About the Message LLC specifically asked the telecom agency to issue a ruling on the legality of its “ringless voicemail” technology. In its petition, the company said it doesn’t cause “disruptions to a consumer’s life,” such as “dead air calls, calls interrupting consumers at inconvenient times, or delivery charges.” And it stressed that its technology isn’t even a “call” by conventional standards."
In comments filed with the FCC (pdf), the RNC effectively warns the FCC not to stand in the way of its quest for ringless voicemail spam, and tries to argue that blocking such marketing is somehow an assault on the First Amendment:
Political speech is "at the very core of the First Amendment," and subjecting direct-tovoicemail political messages to the TCPA would unnecessarily and improperly restrict that speech. It is a basic canon of constitutional law that the government may not restrict constitutionally protected speech unless “it chooses the least restrictive means to further [a compelling] interest. While the government may have an interest in protecting individuals from unwanted and intrusive phone calls, direct-to-voicemail messages are designed to be nonintrusive so as not to interrupt the recipient.
Again though, this ignores the fact that consumers themselves would still have to clean up their voicemail box of additional spam, and don't want this added nuisance. The effort also runs in stark contrast to recent FCC efforts to actually reduce the level of marketing annoyance most wireless subscribers currently face. In its own filing with the FCC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce tried to argue that existing consumer protections provided under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act are "archaic" and stifle the evolution of new, (annoying) technologies:
"The Commission cannot continue to sweep new technologies into this technologically-archaic statute. The language in Section 227(b) reflects a compromise by Congress. The Commission should stop undoing this compromise by expanding the reach of the TCPA into new technologies that Congress has yet to consider, weigh, and assess, so as to ascertain whether those technologies should be unlawful and to determine what penalty should attach to their use."
Whether you want to have a voicemail inbox magically filled with political missives, ads for mattresses and assorted other sales pitches apparently doesn't even enter into the equation. If you'd like to share your thoughts with the FCC on this subject, you can find and comment on the particular proceeding in question, here.
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Filed Under: fcc, marketing, rnc, voicemail
Companies: us chamber of commerce
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A way to be OK
Oh...wait...I don't have a phone. Could they send it to my dead tree mailbox?
not /s, but then I have no expectations of compliance either.
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Re: A way to be OK
I recommend using the dead tree spam to mop up any spillage of the beer.
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How about no?
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Re: How about no?
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Re: Re: How about no?
Wish we could get a class-action lawsuit going for harassment... alas.
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Re: Re: Re: How about no?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How about no?
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Re: Re: How about no?
Well, these are the guys who defend the Citizens United ruling on free-speech grounds, so why should we be surprised to see this?
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Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
Maybe then they'll get a clue.
Personally, I'd file a harasment lawsuit against any organization that spams my voice-mail.
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Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
I've been doing that for years now. "Politician A is already in office? then vote for the other guy".
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Re: Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
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Re: Re: Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
These people do not care about you, all they care about is themselves.
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Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
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Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
Many millions of people chose to vote for neither in 2016. You may have noticed that we now have a bit of an issue. Before we can aim for candidate reform we should probably aim for voting reform. First past the post tends to aggregate politicians into two parties.
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Re: Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
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Re: Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
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Re: Nobody vote for a single Republican (or Democtrat) candidate next election.
My advice would be the opposite of yours: voting people caring about the Republic and Democracy into the office for a change. You might need to start at the primaries for that, assuming that the parties with the respective names are not broken beyond repair.
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Robocalling that just dials Adjit Pai, the RNC and anybody who thinks this is a good idea.
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Re:
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Also, I pay for minutes while checking my voicemail from my phone. So they're going to be allowed to stuff my limited voicemail box with stuff I never asked for and don't want, so that the telco can charge me to remove it?
I need to reconfigure Google Voice to direct ALL my calls by default I guess. Goodbye privacy.
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Finally a use for an elected rep's phone number...
After all, the whole straight-to-voicemail thing is non-disruptive by their own admission, so it won't bother them or their staff.
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how is this not considered a call?
Thank God for iPhone's visual voicemail. Swipe left to delete.
That being said, dialing voicemail uses minutes on most plans. So legislators are allowing telemarketers to run up someone's bill just for the user to delete the voicemail. That is unless that has changed. I haven't paid for "minutes" in years. But I do remember using minutes to dial my voicemail.
And to those that DON'T have visual voicemail, you're asking them to listen to potentially infinite voicemails to get to the actual voicemails that matter to them.
What a crock of shit. What person would push for this legislation without having someone write blank checks in their name to do it for them? The answer is NOBODY. That being said, first person to find this legislator asshole's cell phone number should just spam the ever living fuck out of him until this legislation gets trashed.
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Re: how is this not considered a call?
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Re: how is this not considered a call?
No matter how you look at this it is an annoyance that we should not have to deal with.
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Help me Ajit Pai you're my only hope!
More depressing words are rarely uttered.
Actually, the other hope we have is that he FCC bosses also have cellphones with voicemail too, and this plan may just annoy them into doing the right thing for consumers, as they are consumers as well.
Of course they could just do like some of us and not set up voicemail boxes either.
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I just Thought of a New Consumer Service
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Re: I just Thought of a New Consumer Service
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If they are robo-calling for donations...
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Haha
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Re:
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Re:
After this, may just let it fill up and stay full.
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Re: Re:
I mean, this thread started out distasteful already but you are really piling it on.
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I've had a increase in robo callers since wheeler left.
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Re: I've had a increase in robo callers since wheeler left.
Go to your dialer. Go to the call log. Find the spam number (it's the most recent call right after you hang up on a spammer) Press and hold on that log entry, a popup menu appears. Pick Block Call or Report Spam.
After a few times, the calls start showing a red screen when the phone rings with a spam call. Then after continuing to report them as spam, they just stop completely.
This is Rachael from Cardholder Services.
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Re: Re: I've had a increase in robo callers since wheeler left.
In my area, they rotate numbers daily (sometimes more than once per day) so I'll get multiple identical voicemails in the same day. Also, the Android anti-spam method effectively does what this regulation would do, it sends telemarketers straight to voicemail so I end up dealing with them there. Once I block them there, I don't see voicemails from that number anymore but, number-spoofing, while illegal, is commonplace. I fear the day that they spoof the number of someone I actually know so I can't just block it outright.
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Re: Re: I've had a increase in robo callers since wheeler left.
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Re: Re: Re: I've had a increase in robo callers since wheeler left.
DannyB is talking about the feature built into the Google Dialer in, IIRC, Android 6+. So, you only have to be allowing Google to have a copy of your contacts and, if you're using the Google Dialer on an Android phone, you probably already are.
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Re: I've had a increase in robo callers since wheeler left.
I get it on mobile and landline. Sure you can block them, but as you note below, they constantly change. And the scam callers don't ever seem to take a hit with the telcos somehow... Whether they are robospam, roboscam, or normal marketing ignoring Do Not Call, or "charities" that don't have to obey any rules and won't take a hint, or calls from Bill Myers in India who sees something wrong with your network.
Yeah you can mitigate it, and gee somehow AT&T this month magically added 80 more block slots to their VOIP offering (up from 20) but that is a PITA anyway.
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Help me Google you're my only hope!
I wonder if Android could have a capability to report spam voicemail messages in a similar way? Once enough people have reported the same message, from the same number, Google would block other people from getting the message at all.
Another idea: Google could introduce their own voicemail system, independent of your mobile phone carrier. Such a system would be optional for people to use. But it could offer mass deletion of spam messages by recognizing the same audio of the message, even if it comes from different phone numbers than those reported.
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Re: Help me Google you're my only hope!
Google has their own carrier-independent voicemail system. It's built into Google Voice (which I have) and their Google Fi MVNO. It has good anti-spam but, it only works with messages that can be read by their voice to text engine. Some marketers have gotten around this by including just enough static to confuse the system or by including large gaps before the voice starts to keep it from being sent to the spam folder. And, of course, there's the issue of spam false positives in a voicemail system to contend with.
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I think I see the logic in play here.
If it's something they want to do, then it's not [an invasion of privacy/an intrusion/an annoyance/anticompetitive/overreaching/unconstitutional/tyrannical/dangerous] or whatever else people complain about. At all. Quite the contrary, freedom itself demands it.
If it's something they don't want someone else to do, then it's all of those things. And it must be stopped, or it will destroy America.
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The end of voicemail
I think if this becomes a thing... it will only be that much more likely that voicemail dies completely.
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Re: The end of voicemail
I don't use it any more at work or privately. They can drop as much shit in my VM as they like I will not be listening to a damn thing.
And like another said... I have visual voice mail too... I am only going to mass delete the rest.
Need to setup a caller whitelist now.
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Re: The end of voicemail
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Re: The end of voicemail
Added bonus: You get to play the "Find the important messages from your customers/boss/family/friends" game that is so hip right now.
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Re: The end of voicemail
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Under some layers of seared conscience and inflated ego, there is a germ of once-human nature even in the most assiduous status-seekers. Congresscritters are too exalted, perhaps, they can hire peasants to suffer the slings and arrows of fortune that would otherwise be theirs. But ... federal judges, now, that's a different issue altogether. And if the marketroids ever ever have to face a federal judge who's just cleared his phone of 2 vitally-important messages and 197 advertisements for eggs, extended auto warranties, Russian prostitutes, Nigerian investment opportunities--that last advertisement for Comcast cable service might be just the thing to put him into Judge-Ray-Bean mode.
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sorry I have to ask
(this is a response from 10 years in the future)
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Re: sorry I have to ask
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If I put up a No Trespassing sign at the end of my driveway, "free speech" of no sort gives someone the right to ignore it, and when I call the police to arrest the trespasser I fully expect them to haul that person off to jail even if they claim "political or religious speech".
The very popular state and federal do not call lists are the telecom equivalent to no trespassing signs.
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Re:
Or, maybe not: OR: Here, “the ‘Private Drive’ and ‘No Trespassing’ signs did not objectively manifest an intention to prohibit public access”
It's only one court, in Oregon, but slippery slope and all that.
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New VM Answer Message
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Quick! To the patent office!!
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Let this backfire
Do the politicians not realize that their phone numbers are publicly displayed on all of the US government websites? Okay, sure, these are the office numbers, but still.
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