We agree: Robo Calls are...BAD

An amusing article has mentioned that ALL the corporate giants have gotten together to address the problem of ROBO CALLS.

Really? What brought THIS on?

I guess now that the phone company isn't a monopoly, and Google, Amazon, Comcast and others have the power, people can't shrug and say, "as long as the phone company profits from these calls, they'll never stop."

I guess the CEO of Microsoft was getting too many robo-calls, and the CEO of Google was finding they were disrupting his masturbating.

(Yes, the article was absolutely festering with distracting GOOGLE ads, but at least GOOGLE doesn't phone you up to pester you. Yet.)

As is usually the case, apathy stems from fat-cat morons who slurp a Starbucks, sit back smacking their lips with a self-satisfied "ahhhhhhhh," and then shrug: "It's whack-a-mole. No point bothering to do anything."

People point out that it's so easy to "spoof" (ha ha, it's a SPOOF) a phone number. People smart enough to have caller ID are tricked into picking up, thinking the robo-call is from some unknown friend or business associate in their area code. It's no longer, "Oh, it's an 800 number...an 888 number..."). Real life scammers can also "spoof" a number to make it look like they're from the IRS ("you owe us tax, pay it using PAYPAL to this e-mail address...") or from a bogus police charity ("We're duh Police Benevolent Fund, waddya gonna GIVE US?")

Some (oh the shock, is nothing sacred) are even calling cellphone numbers, forcing nice chattery assholes to pay for the minutes they're on the line with these jerks.

So far, those who hate pesty phone calls of ANY type, have few options. Panasonic makes a phone answering machine that lets you reject a number. But you can only store 50 such numbers. And the phone WILL ring once and disturb you before the call is aborted. And all it does is prevent MORE calls from the same number after you've gotten the scam message.

It's the same deal with most cable companies that now control phone service. At best, they may have a bank of abusive numbers, and like your e-mail which may shift all "known spam" to your spam or trash folder, they'll block calls from phone numbers reported as belonging to robo-call assholes.

PS, they do it for a PRICE, Ugarte. They also don't guarantee that you aren't going to have an important call blocked.

But plenty of jerks get through, AND the law states that it is perfectly legal for POLITICIANS to pester you night and day with robo-calls. How's that for hypocrisy?

"Hello, this is Councilwoman Cunty McTwatt, urging you to VOTE FOR ME on election day..." It is also legal to get pest calls from Cunty McTwatt's election team, in the guise of a "public opinion poll." As in, "Hello, I'm from Councilwoman McTwatt's office, if you have just FIVE minutes, I'd like to ask you some questions..."

Anybody can claim exemption by saying the call is some kind of poll: "Hello, I'm Steelya Munny Wog, from Sri Lanka. Our poll today is whether you'd like to donate $10,000 to our charity or $20,000..." Or, "Hi, I'm Saskia, and I've got a Kickstarter campaign...."