Forget The Russians…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I gave up my landline years ago. The only people who called me were telemarketers. It was nice having a cell phone, because nobody bothered me. But lately, I’ve been deluged with telemarketers robocalling recorded announcements about health insurance. This would be illegal on landlines, but for cell phones, there seem to be no rules

What I want to know is, how did they get my number? It’s not listed in the phone book. I did not sign up for anything. Except Facebook. And Google. And Amazon. And pretty much every other website, which requires me to have a backup phone number in case I get locked out of my account. Which one of these leaked my phone to the telemarketers? Which one of these sold my number?

I’d like Amy Klobuchar to offer legislation to give letters of Marque and Reprisal to any private citizen who can track down these telemarketers so we can seize their computers, their phones, their bank accounts, their assets, and even their pet dogs. I’d even contribute to her reelection campaign.

Joe Doakes

I’d pay extra for a cell/data service and media apps that actually kept my data private.

But I don’t suspect that’s the point…

Posted

January 17, 2019

Business, The Economy and The Markets

Mitch Berg

Tags:

A-Klo

Comments

5 responses to “Forget The Russians…”

jdm

January 17, 2019

I don’t recognize it; I don’t answer. It’s pretty easy. The answering machine function works just fine for those unknowns that have real business. And occasionally those hilarious robo-calls from “the IRS” (who threatened to quote “sic the cops on me” unquote if I didn’t respond).
Night Writer

January 17, 2019

Funny, isn’t it, that the main reason we have a phone – to make and take calls – is now the least popular feature of that phone.
Jay Dee

January 17, 2019

A couple decades ago, I was invited to sell robo-calling machines. It turns out that it is a trivial exercise to set the robo-calling machine to call all the numbers in an area code one after the other. No call list? I know nothing, nothing! I just dialed the number.
Swiftee Pinochet

January 17, 2019

My company provided iPhone receives *at least* 10 robot calls per day. My voice mail tells callers that if I don’t have their names saved, I won’t answer, but I’ll call back if they leave a message.

For some reason, my personal android doesn’t get robo calls. I’m wondering if it has anything to do with the fact that I’ve “de -Googled” it by removing every Google app on it, and always use a VPN when I’m connected to WiFi?
Mammuthus Primigenius

January 17, 2019

Maybe it is the cell number, Joe Doakes. You may have been careful with giving out the number, but someone probably had it before you did.