Elderly folks with landlines are being inundated and heavily harassed by robocalls and telemarketers because these numbers cannot be blocked on landlines. This is just one small example of the many irritations behind telemarketing calls. These calls from either scammers or advertisers serve no purpose and should be eliminated completely.
I would like to see President Trump use this in his campaign and consider enacting this into policy that aligns with the Do Not Call Registry so as to enforce that while removing robocalls.
It is a lot more involved than just this. There are sites online that sell your information. Ownership of homes is public record, and people are sending me postcards every month wanting to buy my property, and displaying my home address in plain sight. I live in a closed record state. This should be part of the closed record. My location being secret is part of my security provisions; I am an elderly widow living alone. And then there is political spamming. Republicans (Trump included) are sending POLITICAL SPAM and it cannot be stopped. A true conservative would never do this. I was added to countless political email lists without my permission. Most will accept unsubscribe, but dailygopnews will not, and there is no way to stop them from spamming me. I get up to 10 a day from them. It’s all begs for money. I don’t have any money. Two other lists are refusing to unsubscribe me. Then there is 2 Factor Authentication, the new rage. Many sites are demanding your phone number as a condition for getting paid for services rendered or otherwise participating. MY PHONE NUMBER IS NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS. Who knows what they’ll do with it once they have it. Moreover, with my hearing loss, I cannot comply anyway, and some companies owe me money and are refusing to pay (violation of Americans with Disabilities Act?) I am paying Incogni good money to get rid of other people selling my information. Robocalls from political sources down to ONE. I shouldn’t have to pay for this. I had to stop texting on my cell phone because of spam texts, which cost me 15c apiece.
It has been extended to cell phones. Hundreds of spam calls all day, it is never ending. There has to be a way to stop this. Putting your number on the “no call” list doesn’t work, it makes it worse. Please stop this madness.
A good way to stop it would be to tax it so much per email or call. A penny per spam would go a long ways to limiting it. It would force them to do their research and make the spam at least targeted to people who might be interested.
Actually that won’t work. Two reasons. First, a lot of spam comes from overseas. Good luck collecting tax from them! Second, if they could find spammers to tax them, they’d just take them down. That is what they do now. And I’ve seen how this can seriously cut down on spam instantaneously. And before we worry about taxing them, we need to make it illegal for political groups and candidates to spam. I had a huge problem with political spam during the past year. Supposedly I could unsubscribe, but it never worked. I would receive six to ten spam a day from one sender. And many, many candidates and organizations were using it. As for robocalls, I think I got TWO this past season. In the past, it had been a barrage. What made the difference? I subscribed to Incogni. Incogni contacts people search sites and demands they expunge records of subscribers. Apparently political robocallers are using these sites to get phone numbers. It’s the ONLY way they could have gotten mine, because I never gave it to anyone, including the county recorder. But when it comes to political entities, I emailed many of them and asked them where they got their information, and to take me out. Only one organization ever responded. They stopped using the spam service, but nothing more.