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I have been getting calls that immediately start with, "Thank you for choosing Marriot Hotels!" for a couple years now. The message goes on to say how I am getting this great offer because I am a valued customer. On a couple occasions, I stayed on the line to get a human, they ask yes/no questions (are you over 28? do you have a valid credit card?). I just replied with questions of my own, and they immediately hung up. I can continue to ignore the calls, but they are always from a random local number and I get nearly twice as many of these calls than I get legitimate calls.
I did a search and found this has been around for a while and Marriot is aware:
http://news.marriott.com/2015/05/marriott-international-responds-to-continued-phone-scam-updated-oct-20-2015/
I have deliberated about posting, but I don't see the FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] as being able to act unless I can provide them something more than the spoofed phone number. Providing the number(s) probably won't help as they are spoofing the caller ID. I know that this is a long shot, but is there anything anyone can suggest beyond creating a spreadsheet of phone numbers, dates, and times to log these calls? Would that even be useful?
It seems that something is fundamentally broken with the current phone system, if this spoofing is even possible. But that is a side topic here, the real question is, what can I do, if anything, to get the data the FCC would need to shut this down?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:14AM
I was getting a lot of calls too... as I have a stellar voting record.
In my area, the fact whether or not someone voted seems to be a public record. WHO they voted for, of course, is not.
So I got a lot of calls before the election.
It was a good chance for me to vent steam, as no matter which party called me up, the argument was the same.
I would launch into a tirade ( as I often do here ) over how much I resented the passage of the DMCA, the DRM, the Electronic Locks, and Congressmen passing law to require me being ignorant of that which I am loading into my machine.
I emphasized how much it irritated me to be presented what were to me binding legal contracts, enforced by the laws of physics that govern my machine. But some Congressman does not believe I should be allowed to read it, yet be expected to just take it when all the clauses the code writer put in there come to surface. All of those congress-critters voted that thing in without one peep of the rightsholder thereof being held accountable for what his copyrighted code does in my machine. Yet I am supposedly required by law to accept this thing without understanding it. I ask them why copyright even applied if it was DRM? Why isn't it a "trade secret" because the thing is not revealed?
I would ask them if I were given a redacted contract to sign, would the redacted content be legally enforceable? Well, how about if I sent a Lobbyist to Shake the Hand of an Honorable Congressman, then could I do this so I could get legal enforcement to do whatever I please with other people? Just make sure the people I wanted to take advantage of were Law Abiding people, while the Makers of Law were for sale. Who would do such a thing? And why should anyone call such a thing "honorable"?
I would ask why is it when we were in school, we went through a procedure every day of standing up, facing the Flag of the United States of America, placing our right hand over our hearts, and saying "I Pledge Allegiance - blah blah blah - Justice For All." while my own Congress is abrogating that agreement by violating the last three words of that pledge.
Then I would fire back if they would vote for any nannysack who cared so little for my interests they would actually sign such a thing into law?
I would go on and on and on about how pissed off I was getting over being sold out by people I voted for.
Until they would eventually hang up.