Re: OT? www.donotcall.gov problem

[Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org>]

Paul Johnson <baloo@ursine.ca> writes:

> The easy answer is ditch your landline in favor of a cell-phone.  It's
> illegal to make unsolicted commercial phone calls to cell-phones in
> the US, and telemarketers do respect this.

Well, they sort of respect it.  They'll still call, but they'll hang
up really quickly when they hear it's a cell phone, and I _think_ they
take it off their list... at least, I don't remember many repeats.
But I didn't get a substantial decrease of telemarketer calls on my
cell phone till I signed up for the NY do-not-call list.

> Caller ID works infrequently between area codes.

That's not really the problem.  Nobody uses Caller ID for this sort
of thing... they have ANI (Automatic Number Identification), which is
the same information the telcos have for billing.  That information
_does_ work between area codes and can't be blocked.

However, as someone else may have mentioned, that won't necessarily
give the correct phone number in the case of a PBX.  Many PBXes show
the same phone number on ANI for all outgoing calls, which is correct
for billing, but wouldn't let you register your incoming phone
number.  So the query and confirmation is to help stop that kind of
problem, or at least let the user know.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
"Tonight's episode: GAS FOOD LODGING...and MURDER!"