On July 31, 2013 at 08:00 jay@west.net (Jay Hennigan) wrote:
It's surprising how people go out of their way to deny that it's a sales call, and then start trying to sell something.
[NOTE: The anecdote is followed by some practical advice] <ANECDOTE> I had a guy call and tell the person who answered he was my brother and there was a family emergency. I don't have a brother. I said put him through. He began a sales pitch. That was quite a few years ago, he probably still talks about what jerk I am and if so I am proud of it! </ANECDOTE> <ADVICE> THAT SAID, beyond personal tastes, in this context there's really only one substantive complaint: Telemarketing info is PAID FOR, particularly in a ready to use list form. If they're scraping WHOIS etc for free that's a problem. Lists can be protected by intellectual property law against such abuse. The usual method is to insert "ringers" which would be info which points back at non-existant people with valid-looking contact information. If for example they called a phone number, or several, owned by ARIN (or a service they employed) asking for James T Kirk or Diana Prince then that would be a problem and should be logged. One obvious response is to just bill them a reasonable telemarketing list rental fee for the entire database and go from there. Believe it or not this is well-trod ground, people steal or abuse (e.g., resell w/o permission) telemarketing and mailing list info all the time. </ADVICE> -- -Barry Shein The World | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Dial-Up: US, PR, Canada Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*