California, Florida, Texas, Illinois, and New York logged the most Do Not Call complaints this year.
It seems the nation’s Do Not Call system is under attack.
First The Federal Trade Commission today issued a warning about scammers looking to gather personal information by pretending to represent the National Do Not Call Registry. The callers offer to provide an opportunity to sign up for the Registry but the FTC nor the Registry makes no such calls.
Secondly, despite or perhaps because of a record number of consumers in the registry, close to 210 million, the number of consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls increased over 638,000 to 2,272,662 in 2011 from 1,633,819 at the end of 2010.
According to the FTC, the number of consumer complaints about recorded messages used in telemarketing did hit a low of 79,592 in April 2011, the data show that the number of complaints about such calls has increased consistently since then, reaching 140,503 in September 2011. Most telemarketing robocalls have been illegal since September 2009 unless a consumer has agreed to accept such calls from a given caller/seller.
Still most complaints surround ignored requests that a particular company stop calling and didn’t’ as well as prerecorded or robocalled messages. California, Florida, Texas, Illinois, and New York logged the most complaints this year.
The FTC says it remains committed to stopping deceptive, misleading, and otherwise unlawful robocalls, and will take action against entities violating the agency’s Telemarketing Sales Rule.
The do-not-call rules require telemarketers and sellers to remove from their call lists (at least every 31 days) the numbers on the Registry. Telemarketers can access the Registry through a website dedicated to that purpose, the FTC stated.
Follow Michael Cooney on Twitter: nwwlayer8 and on Facebook
Layer 8 Extra
Check out these other hot stories:
How do you keep your security workforce?
Another SCADA threat? Well, only if you count white-lightning as a hazard
High-tech potty talk: Pee-and-play gaming system hits the toilet
Feds seize 150 website domains for selling fake goods
Successful, effective IT project tips
Energy company wants to be first to mine the moon
NASA turns up ocean of water, and possibility of life, on Jupiter’s moon
US Marshals selling autographed Bill Clinton saxophone, trove of other bling
DARPA wants powerful, secure wireless system to link space satellites
IBM: Analytics, mobile, cloud, social apps drive future IT development
10 petaflop Japanese supercomputer world’s fastest
DARPA program looks to radically change security authentication techniques
DARPA gets serious with Internet security, schmoozes the dark side
“Mudge” Zatko shaking up DARPA’s security software routine
