News

The Federal Trade Commission has issued final rules banning pre-recorded calls from telemarketers.

Starting September 30, Canadians will be able to prevent unsolicited calls by registering with a do-not-call list (DNCL). Any Canadian phone number can be registered, whether used with a landline, a cell phone or a fax machine. There will be no charge for the service.

Two telemarketing companies that sell Dish Network satellite TV services have agreed to pay fines of $95,000 for ignoring the federal do-not-call list and making customers listen to recordings for too long, federal regulators said.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) is warning small businesses and consumers to beware of scam activity generating from Champlain, New York - with a tiny population of just over 1,200 it has over 3,000 complaints that involve companies with Champlain and nearby cross-border addresses.

Police are putting out a warning about a phishing scam targeting thousands of cell phone customers.

In a report filed yesterday morning, the FTC said the "Do Not Call" list is "by every available measure, an effective consumer protection initiative."

We have recently discovered that many phone numbers, reported to be connected with unauthorized charges, are being targeted by spammers, who come to the website and make unrelated postings to the discussion threads.

Last week we received a letter from Thomas Georgianna, mynutritionstore’s lawyer, in which he demanded the removal of unfavorable postings to avoid a costly lawsuit against 800Notes.com.

Telemarketers in Mississippi are now required to reveal their own name and number.

The Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday to require telemarketers to continue complying with the national do-not-call registry.

The Missouri Attorney General's office has gotten a $450,000 consent judgment against a telemarketing firm that had phoned people on the state's "No Call" list.

Since 6am Tuesday, June 10th 800Notes.com has been under a large scale distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. The website is targeted by hackers that use automated programs to try to jam the site with bogus requests. We estimate that they use several thousand computers from which they make several thousand requests per second.

As of Friday Wisconsin residents can sign up for a do-not-call registry for mobile phones.

The Federal Trade Commission launched a new consumer education campaign this month called "Who's Calling?" to warn consumers about telemarketing phone scams.

Noah Schiffman at networkworld.com looks into statistics provided by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) about complaints filed. According to the numbers the majority of complaints are filed against land line telecommunication providers.

The first telemarketers charged with transmitting false Caller IDs (a process known as caller ID spoofing) to consumers were fined and found liable for $530,000 in damages.

Those ceaseless, computer-generated calls that try to get you to sign up for some must-have extended auto warranty have become more than just annoying.

An interesting initiative has been started by  city officials in North Olmsted, OH. Starting Monday April 14th, a "Do Not Knock"law, in the same spirit of the "Do Not Call" registry, takes effect. The city officials are giving residents a chance to fend off unwanted door-to-door salespeople.

Police say a company is running a telemarketing scam. The telemarketer called at least one person in  Sioux City, IA claiming to be raising money for North High's athletics. They're not. In fact, North High officials told police that the school hasn't asked anyone to solicit money for the athletics program.