National Do Not Call Registry
Someone just sent me a link to this site. Looks legit, plus it's ".gov" and I am sure I have heard of it before. Anyway, you should check it out cause telemarketers need to be stopped. Plus, I only have a cell phone so I basically get charged (via minutes) for incoming calls which I have not requested which is totally lame!
The National Do Not Call Registry gives you a choice about whether to receive telemarketing calls at home. Most telemarketers should not call your number once it has been on the registry for 31 days. If they do, you can file a complaint at this Website. You can register your home or mobile phone for free. Your registration will be effective for five years.
Anyway, check it out: http://www.donotcall.gov/
Reader Comments
Yes, it's legit, and it works very well. You just need to be aware of the limitations.
The law doesn't cover charitable organizations, political groups, survey takers, or anyone you have a business relationship with (so your phone company can still call and try to "upsell" you, for example). The site covers the exceptions in more detail. It won't get the unsolicited calls down to zero, but it will make a substantial dent.
When viewing www.donotcall.gov my browser popped up a warning for:
"Could not verify this certificate because the issuer is unknown."
I chose to examine the certificate details and found the "Issued to" address does not match the domain name for the site, which made me wary:
Issued To: g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net
However, I then double-clicked the lock icon and found it was a different certificate that did in fact match for *.donotcall.gov.
Scratching my head, I viewed source and found the page is including a reference to resource at a different URL:
http://g6589dcs.nyc2.aens.net/DCS0000036D4Q/njs.gif?dcsuri=/nojavascript
So this may be what was triggering the warning in my browser the image domain didn't match the domain for the website domain.
Looking further I think the problem is just that the remote resource at aens.net has its own certificate signed with updated Issuer information:
Issued From:
CN = VeriSign Class 3 Secure Server CA
OU = Terms of use at https://www.verisign.com/rpa (c)05
OU = VeriSign Trust Network
O = VeriSign, Inc.
C = US
Verisign has posted a pre-emptive warning about this, though:
http://www.verisign.com/support/advisories/page029264.html
"The VeriSign/RSA root expires in January 2010 and it is important that the migration off this root is completed well before that date. VeriSign will be rolling out this new 2048 bit VeriSign Class 3 Secure Server CA to all Secure Site and Standard SSL Certificate customers during 2006. "
I tried to do a whois search on donotcall.gov to verify to whom the domain was registered. If I found it was registered to government agency and not some phisher then I'd have more faith in the site, but instead I just found that "The domain extension you entered (.gov) is not supported.".... So much for that.
Steven,
Hmmmmm, so you think it's a no go??
I agree that it's legit. That site is linked from the Federal Trade Commission website as well (http://www.ftc.gov/donotcall/).
However please note that according to the FTC, "FCC regulations prohibit telemarketers from using automated dialers to call cell phone numbers. Automated dialers are standard in the industry, so most telemarketers are barred from calling consumers on their cell phones without their consent."... so your cell phone should already be protected. But it probably doesn't hurt to add your cell phone to the registry.
Jen,
It's good to know that cell phones are already protected... but I can assure you that I have gotten several telemarketer type phone calls. Not a lot, but some people clearly have no regard for the law :)
Yea, cell phones are protected. Right... I just got a telemarketing recording calling me on mine. Which was supposed to be in the national do not call list as I did that when I got the phone last year. Filing my complaint with the DNC list web site it says my number os not registered. Weird... It is now, and I've got a printout saying so. I wish phones had a feature to ban incoming calls built-in to them, so I could select the number, press ban, and never receive anything from them again.