I am having a hard time getting started this morning. It is entirely possible that this is associated with the high level of noise from the cocktail nook at Willow last night. It was OK when we were doing it the night before with the Aussies, but this was a alien group who stole all the stools from the bar and backed right up to the apex of the Amen Corner. I couldn’t hear Old Jim growl, and to remedy that problem we presently found ourselves sitting out at the patio with Jon-without, Chanteuse Mary and Gordon the Green Entrepreneur who privately chuckles at the CO2 story. Marvin plied us with live-giving beverages and snacking on Irish Nachos and savory chili from the kitchen.
So I admit I was a little blurry when I rolled out of the rack, and things got complicated from there. It started with nomorobo and went steadily downhill from there. I have to get in the pool before the heavy rains from what is left of Tropical Storm Bill comes through. Getting to the farm is starting to look problematic.
https://www.nomorobo.com/
I would hate to take the afternoon off and just vegetate in my brown chair- we will see what happens.
I have been riled up all week about digital issues. The wholesale theft of our personal data is just part of it. Oh, I know, bank account information, Social Security number, associates, former spouses, yada yada and that troubling matter of what happened in Aurora Colorado in 1977 isn’t something I would willingly have given to the technologists of the People’s Republic of China. Oh well. Life is going to be an open book for a lot of us.
But technology in general has been bugging me. Beyond the threat of financial and professional ruin, I am tired and irritated by the constant stream of robo calls that come on the Verizon FiOS triple-play bundle I got to escape the clutches of those bastards at Comcast. I thought I had signed up for the “don’t call list” years ago, but the land-line that came with FiOS triple-play bundle rings all the time with solicitations. I have to physically restrain the Pavlovian response to pick it up; there is only one person whose call I will answer on that phone, since it has never been associated with work, or things to which I have to continue to pretend to pay attention.
Anyway, checking the morning mail, I sifted through the catalogue of outrages and saw that there had been another court decision on the irritating calls. In a decision this week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to officially allow carriers to offer robocall blocking services to their customers!
The message was loud and clear – they are our phones and we should be in control. In a package of declaratory rulings, the Commission affirmed consumers’ rights to control the calls we get- and fine the callers up to $500 a call.
I am no fan of the FCC and am deeply suspicious of the agenda behind their recent assertion of jurisdiction over the internet, but I am cautiously optimistic about this spate of rule-making.
In the package, the Commission also made clear that telephone companies face no legal barriers to allowing consumers to choose to use robocall-blocking technology. Protests related to unwanted calls are the largest category of complaints received by the Commission, numbering more than 215,000 in 2014.
The action addresses almost two-dozen petitions and other requests that sought clarity on how the Commission interprets the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), closing loopholes and strengthening consumer protections already on the books. The TCPA requires prior express
consent for non-emergency auto-dialed, prerecorded, or artificial voice calls to wireless phone numbers, as well as for prerecorded telemarketing calls to residential wire-line numbers.
Here is the news you can use:
Green Light for ‘Do Not Disturb’ Technology
– Service providers can offer robocall-blocking technologies to consumers and implement market-based solutions that consumers can use to stop unwanted robocalls. (nomorobo and the carriers can help).
Empowering Consumers to Say ‘Stop’
– Consumers have the right to revoke their consent to receive robocalls and robotexts in any reasonable way at any time. Goddamn right we do.
Reassigned Numbers Aren’t Loopholes
– If a phone number has been reassigned, companies must stop calling the number after one call.
Third-Party Consent
– A consumer whose name is in the contacts list of an acquaintance’s phone does not consent to receive robocalls from third-party applications downloaded by the acquaintance.
Additional highlights for wireless consumers include:
Affirming the Law’s Definition of Autodialer
– “Autodialer” is defined in the Act as any technology with the capacity to dial random or sequential numbers. This definition ensures that robocallers cannot skirt consumer consent requirements through changes in calling technology design or by calling from a list of numbers.
Text Messages as Calls
– The Commission reaffirmed that consumers are entitled to the same consent-based protections for texts as they are for voice calls to wireless numbers.
Internet-to-Phone Text Messages
– Equipment used to send Internet-to-phone text messages is an auto-dialer, so the caller must have consumer consent before calling.
Very Limited and Specific Exemptions for Urgent Circumstances
– Free calls or texts to alert consumers to possible fraud on their bank accounts or remind them of important medication refills, among other financial alerts or healthcare messages, are allowed without prior consent, but other types of financial or healthcare calls, such as marketing or debt
collection calls, are not allowed under these limited and very specific exemptions. Also, consumers have the right to opt out from these permitted calls and texts at any time.
Today’s actions make no changes to the Do-Not-Call Registry, which restricts unwanted telemarketing calls (but didn’t work to block the constant irritating calls), but are intended to build on the Registry’s effectiveness by closing loopholes and ensuring that consumers are fully protected from unwanted calls, including those not covered
by the Registry.
If you want more details, just do a search for “FCC robocalls” and you can read all the stories about it.
So, naturally I went to Verizon to see what I could do about getting set up to reject robocalls. It was not an easy experience for a confirmed Luddite like myself.
I don’t use their email, never set up the voicemail, forgot my username and password, blah blah blah. I waded through all that and attempted to set up nomorobo, and learned a lot. There is an option to have all your phones ring at once. That is the disturbing phenomena I noted last week- is someone screwing with me? Well, you can set up your phones to do that. I have no idea if someone is doing that to me. There is an option buried deep in one of the sub-menus to “stop unwanted calls” and I have selected that option.
If this is not an issue for you, more power to you. If you find it as intrusive as I do, nomorobo might be something you want to check out.
I was pecking at this when the phone went off shortly after 1100. The screen on the phone glowed “Unavailable” as the source of the call. It rang exactly once and went away. Huzzah- the technology works! And with the election still more than a year away, this could be a life-saver!
Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303