Ideas For Stopping Telemarketers And Other Junk Callers

Businessweek has an article on junk phone calls and reports that for a variety of reasons junk callers may start calling cell phones more often.

Soon after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) implements its wireless number portability rules on Nov. 24, it's expected that most phone customers will also be able to keep the same number when they switch from regular landline to wireless service. And as that happens, telemarketers almost certainly will start reaching people via their mobile phones.

This is a problem that calls out for neat technological solutions. One idea would be for cell phone and regular phone companies to offer phone number blacklist and whiltelist access control services similar to what a variety of services now offer for controlling spam email.

In the simplest blacklist case one could sign up one's phone number to not allow calls from some list of phone numbers that an organization maintained as being a junk phone call marketer list. Different organizations could compete to maintain different lists. A phone company could provide several to choose from that a customer could assign to one's own phone number account. Any phone number on the list that you assign to your phone number would not be allowed to call thru if attempting to call your phone number. You'd simply never get the call.

A cell phone company could even provide personalized blacklists per customer. There'd be ads that sounded like "Not only do you get 4000 anytime minutes but we also give you a 100 entry personal phone number blacklist.". Upon receiving a telemarketer call you could hit a button on your cell phone that indicates you never want to get a call from that number again. That has uses for reasons that go beyond junk callers. It would be great for avoiding the calls of old boyfriends and girlfriends or cranks.

Another option would be whitelists. Instead of choosing lists of calling numbers to block thru you'd choose lists of numbers to allow thru. This could be done at a personal level or with big organization approved whitelists. There could be a white list that is for all government agencies. There could be another for public and private schools. There could be one for residential phone numbers since most junk calls come from business phone numbers.

The gradual decline in the cost of phone calls and for automated dialing systems and voice recording systems is only going to lower the cost for telemarketers to make calls. They will be able to do so internationally and therefore their abuses will become harder to stop with laws. We need technological means to control who gets access to our own personal time.

Another neat feature would be the ability to quickly change your level of filter for different types of calls. If you are going to be driving and don't want to get non-emergency calls you could set your cell phone to "High Priority Only". That could mean to switch to your shorter whitelist rather than your longer whitelist. There could even be different whitelists for different times of the day or days of the week. Also, there could be whitelists and blacklists that have different actions to do in response to a call. For some the caller might get a message saying that they are blocked permanently. For other entries they'd get shuffled to voice mail. For still other callers they'd get told to call back after 6 PM or only on weekdays during business hours.

Phone companies that started offering these services would have a competitive advantage over those who didn't. They coud charge extra for different levels and kinds of filtering abilities. There are plenty of obvious variations that could be implemented on the ideas outlined above. Companies could compete on how they identify junk callers of various types, how they categorize the various types, how easy they make it to review and change filter settings, and how many levels and kinds of services they offer. If implemented first for landline phones then the landline companies would increase the appeal of landline accounts over cell phone accounts. Given that it is going to become possible to switch a landline phone number to a cell phone the desireability for cell phones to have this kind of service looks set to increase.

Posted by Randall Parker at October 10, 2003 07:47 PM