Frank Kemp was working on his computer when his cellphone let out the sound of Mario — from Super Mario Bros. — collecting a coin. That signaled he had a new voice mail message, yet his phone had never rung.
"At first, I thought I was crazy," said Mr. Kemp, a video editor in Dover, Del. "When I checked my voice mail, it made me really angry. It was literally a telemarketing voice mail to try to sell telemarketing systems."
Mr. Kemp had just experienced a technology gaining traction called ringless voice mail, the latest attempt by telemarketers and debt collectors to reach the masses. The calls are quietly deposited through a back door, directly into a voice mail box — to the surprise and (presumably) irritation of the recipient, who cannot do anything to block them.
Regulators are considering whether to ban these messages. They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing.
But consumer advocates, technology experts, people who have been inundated with these calls and the lawyers representing them say such an exemption would open the floodgates. Consumers' voice mail boxes would be clogged with automated messages, they say, making it challenging to unearth important calls, whether they are from an elderly mother's nursing home or a child's school.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday June 06 2017, @12:54PM (2 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:16AM
The main purpose of voicemail nowadays is a way of screening my calls. If I don't recognize your number you go to voicemail. If you leave a nice message I'll decide whether I want to call you back. 95%+ of spam calls don't leave a voicemail. Admittedly the ones that do are annoying as hell.
Of course, if they would fix the goddamn spam call problem so that if my phone rings, it's actually someone I would want to talk to, then maybe I'd disable the voicemail.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:54PM
It's hard to compose SMS or email on a cell phone with only a 10-key keypad, not a touch screen or a QWERTY keyboard. And forget about it on a payphone or other landline.