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Gee, it's only been going on for decades. Now the FCC 'takes steps'?

I thought it was already illegal to cram. Providers aren't able to give a line with 12 features that the customer never uses instead of the basic line. Additionally, no feature should be added to the line without a customer's explicit permission. When a service is ordered (long distance, voice mail, etc) from a 3rd party vendor, the vendor should have to provision the purchase through the carriers system and the carrier should check with the customer to see if the service was solicited before any billing begins. If it is not handled this way than the 3rd party vendor needs to bill separately for the service, thereby allowing the consumer full knowledge of the cost of the service.

This is more along the lines of 900 numbers charging random phone numbers for services that they didn't deliver, or picking your information off those ubiquitous lists of subscribers that every kind of corporation loves to resell, including your phone company, to 'sign you up' for various non-services and again peck away at your wallet with some small 'fee' tacked conveniently onto your bill among 100 lines of other 'fees' and 'taxes' and crap.

Basically, phone services are completely backwards about everything.

They can't let you block calls, even when MOST of the calls you get are from spammers and 'bots. Google Voice once allowed you to block 'wildcards', like 800,888,877,866, etc. numbers that are pure crap. Then they got sued and pulled the feature. Because it's every corporation and scam artist's SACRED RIGHT to ring your phone at oh-dark-hundred, or whenever you are likely to sit down to dinner.

Similarly, by default, you're opted-in to be F***ED by crammers, and to allow ANYONE to dial 900 services, that can possibly touch one of your phones.

And don't forget, even if you never use IM, by default, many wireless carriers will charge YOU for the privilege of being spammed for each IM you ever receive. Once again, some will allow you to 'opt out', but by default, you're screwed.

Not to mention the location and activity tracking they do. You can 'opt out' of that, if you can find out how.
http://lifehacker.co...lphone-activity

No matter how many times they CLAIM the data is 'anonymous', they have no credibility at all. PIPA would make that data even less 'anonymous'.

Evildave, on 29 April 2012 - 01:35 PM, said:

I never could figure that one out. It's your phone service that YOU pay for every month, and YOU should be able to block whomever you don't want calling.
Personally I think that any marketer that calls YOUR phone should have to pay YOU for your time, after all, it is YOUR phone. That would put a stop to all the BS.

Yes, but when it's free, like email spam, or it costs the recipients money, like spam faxes and IMs, there's plenty of advertising to do, and little or no reason not to bother you with it.

It's about damn time. And as for blocking those calls it just doesn't happen, even with being on the government list. I had one of these people even laugh at me and said how do you think you can stop us. The phone company said we could block them just use the manual we got from them. We never got anything from them other then the bill. They said they would send us one , we have never ever gotten anything but the bill from them. have tried many times. And they no longer have a office you can go to them either. The government should make it so a Company like AT@T has to keep and office open in every major City. And even if we could block them the Phone company only allows 4 blocked calls or it cost you extra. We get dozens of these calls a month. It's all a scam and the phone company's in on it.

Just another attempt from the government to try to save us headache and money. All it will do will raise our rates and the crooks will find another way to screw us. So in another 15 years they will have another big new regulation to stop that and then it starts all over again.

Careful checking of your bill, from you supplier(att) or a third party will reveal any instances of cramming. Virgin Atlantic started charging for text messages received, out of the blue. I never had texting service before so they just added it and the charges piled up. I only paid $15. a quarter and had amassed almost $100. in unused patments. It dissappeared and I wasn't aware as the phone had been off for a month. Their customer service turned the junk off again but wouldn't return my fraudulent charges from third parties that collected the cash from each text message. Be aware, suppliers may turn on or add some services and insist you pay them before they shut it off. Can I yell RIP OFF any louder??