You really can fight back against those blasted calls. Here's how you can sign up for the new National 'Do Not Call' Registry, plus some ways to fight e-mail spam and junk mail.

By Liz Pulliam Weston


Your home is about to get a lot quieter -- especially around dinner time.

The Federal Trade Commission will put a leash on telemarketers July 1 by activating a national do-not-call list.

Once you sign up -- a free service, by the way, and don’t let scam artists tell you otherwise -- the government promises a substantial drop in telemarketing calls within three months.

“We think it’s the most significant improvement in consumer protection in a decade,” said Jason Catlett, president of Junkbusters Corp., which fights spam and marketing intrusions of all kinds. “It’s going to make an enormous difference in the lives of Americans.”

Sign up via phone or Web site
You know it’s a good law by the sheer volume of gnashing teeth emanating from the Direct Marketing Association and other groups representing telemarketers, who will be required to purge their databases of registry phone numbers at least quarterly.

You can sign up for the National "Do Not Call" Registry online starting July 1 (see the link to the registry Web site at left under Related Sites), or you can call a toll-free number (to be announced in late June) if you live west of the Mississippi. Folks east of the Mississippi can call in to register a week later.

Your peace isn’t entirely assured, since there are bound to be scofflaws willing to risk the $11,000-per-call fine. You will, however, have an easy online way to report the scoundrels, and you can still take them to small claims court if you want. The consumer’s right to sue under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act has been preserved.

Also, several types of businesses are exempted from having to use the registry, at least for now:
long-distance telephone companies

banks and credit unions

airlines

insurers

political campaigns

charities

companies with which you already have a business relationship. (These can call you for up to 18 months after your last purchase, or three months after you make an inquiry or submit any type of application). But if you ask these callers to stop bothering you, they, too, are required to obey.
Even if you choose not to sign up for the registry -- it’s hard to imagine why you wouldn’t, but for the sake of argument let’s say you like constant interruptions -- you’ll have new ways to know who’s calling and why. The same rules that institute the do-not-call registry also require:
A ban on blocked IDs. Telemarketers will be required to transmit their phone numbers and, usually, their names to your Caller ID service.

No more hide-and-seek. Telemarketers are required to tell you upfront who they are and why they’re calling.

Less dead air. There should be someone on the line when you pick up the phone -- or you should at least get a recorded message saying who’s calling.
Telemarketers have long violated federal law by using automatic dialing systems to ring more victims than they have operators to handle. Now the FTC finally seems determined to kill this practice with tougher enforcement so you won’t have to “wait to be annoyed,” as Catlett put it.

Many of the businesses currently exempted from using the registry, said FTC spokeswoman Cathy MacFarlane, may eventually be required to use it. The Federal Communications Commission is considering extending the do-not-call requirements to the businesses it regulates, which include long-distance phone carriers, airlines, banks and credit unions.

Spread the word
If you previously signed up for a state do-not-call list -- many states instituted them in the decade or so it took to get this national registry -- your number will eventually be added to the federal list, but it may take awhile. There’s nothing to stop you from speeding things along by signing up for the national list as soon as you’re able.

You might do what you can to spread the word to friends and family, as well -- particularly if you have an elderly relative who seems to be on every sucker list in the country. Some older folks are too polite to hang up on a telemarketer and thus get conned into every sweepstakes, scam and swindle going. You might offer to sit with them while they call the registry.

What you shouldn't do is sign up with any company that promises to “pre-register” you for a fee. The FTC says it won’t accept sign-ups from these companies -- you have to do it yourself when the registry opens.

The federal do-not-call registry is almost certain to be more effective than the methods we currently have for combating the two other major marketing intrusions: junk mail and spam.

Fight spam and credit-card offers
The Direct Marketing Association maintains do-not-mail lists that you can sign up for on its Web site (see link at left). But only the association’s members are required to scrub their mailing databases against the list, so you may not see a huge decrease in junk mail.

You also can reduce credit card solicitations by calling an opt-out service run by the three major credit bureaus: (888) 5-OPT OUT. You’ll need to provide your Social Security number as an identifier. You probably will notice a decline in the number of credit card offers you receive but, again, the list is voluntary and many marketers don’t honor these requests.

Fighting e-mail spam is even more of an uphill battle. Sites like Junkbusters and Fight Spam on the Internet (see links at left under Related Sites) offer suggestions and links to filtering software. The best way to reduce spam, though, is still the same: trying to keep your e-mail address off the spammers’ lists in the first place. That means not posting it on public Web sites if possible and choosing an unusual handle that won’t be guessed by “dictionary spamming” software that simply creates endless lists of names, hoping to find ones that work.

And one more thing . . .
Finally, a word to you telemarketers who are about to e-mail me with angry denouncements of the federal do-not-call list and to complain about losing your jobs:

I once cleaned houses to make ends meet, which means I quite literally scrubbed toilets to make a living. That, my dears, is honest work. You might give it a shot.

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