Legislation pending before New York state lawmakers would make unwanted robocalls illegal.
The measure would prohibit anyone from using automatic dialing technology to contact a New Yorker for commercial purposes if they don’t have the person’s prior permission.
The legislation would also require telephone companies to offer free services to consumers allowing them to prescreen robocalls.
No vote on has been scheduled for the bill, which is sponsored by Sen. Brad Hoylman and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou. The two Manhattan Democrats plan to detail their proposal at a Capitol press conference on Tuesday.
[Do You Hate Those Annoying Robocalls? Are They Against Halacha?]
(AP)
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8 Responses
I’m all for such a bill. Those robocalls are annoying. I have to block all international calls, and I never know if the call might be from a relative or someone. 🙁
Doesn’t affect Tzedaka calls and the overseas scammers will ignore it.
Terrific!
I love how people think making dumb laws will fix problems. The callers are in foreign countries. They don’t care about our laws. See: IRS scams, etc.
moshiah is coming
Uncle Ben:
I am with you. My work day is interrupted countless times with these robocalls, and I get the duplicates at home. I have tried in vain to stop them. I wish I could log the number of hours of damage I incur and sue them for damages.
Uncle Ben: How do you know the new legislation wont deal with the tzedaka Robocalls?
I fully agree that a) Robocalls are a big problem, and b) laws will not change much. Except for annoying election calls during an election period, most calls are scammers or otherwise illegal.
Here is something you can do for yourself to help with the problem:
I recently switched my home phone from a Verizon copper line to a VOIP provider. One amazing feature that they include for free is a 3rd-party service called NOMOROBO. (I think it works by scanning all incoming phone numbers against a real-time database of all other users. Any phone number that is calling a lot of other customers within a certain time period gets automatically blocked.) All I hear on my end is a single ring and then it disconnects. You just have to learn to wait until after the first ring before answering – which I do anyway because I wait for the caller-ID to appear on the screen.
I sometimes work from home, and I am amazed – it blocks as many as TWENTY calls per day!!
The only possible drawback is that some of the calls might be important community announcements, like a Kinnus etc… When Agudah and other organizations recently urged everyone to go out to vote for an emergency election, the only way I knew about it was from a shul announcement. I did not (B”H!) receive any of the Robo calls.