Penalty Boxes for Spam-meisters and Telemarketers.

Over the last week or so, I've been having problems with a certain telemarketing firm calling my "Do Not Call" listed home number. I've discovered it's trivially easy to file a complaint. Go to the same Do Not Call website you registered your phone on, https://www.donotcall.gov, and click on the "File a Complaint". Follow instructions (You need name and phone number of company to be effective) and two minutes later, you're done. This is on a par with two of my favorite emails to know, uce@ftc.gov (for domestic spam proposing illegal commercial activity) and enforcement@sec.gov (for securities related illegal spam). Action does take a while, but I've actually gotten "Thank You" notes from the SEC (not just the email autoresponse), and I know at least one ended up in jail time for the perpetrator.



All three things are examples of good things government does or can do. In the latter two cases, all it does is trigger an investigation which may be over and forgotten in two seconds, or which may involve some serious enforcement official time if they think the payoff is there. I like the thought that every time some spam-meister hits "send" he's hoping nobody forwards it to the FTC or SEC.



In the case of the Do Not Call telemarketer, they may be domestic or foreign, but if they're foreign they want to sell things in this country, which means there is a lever to fine them. And I'm just enough of a jerk to think that two minutes of my time to cost them $11,000 may give them serious reason to pay attention to the Do Not Call list, particularly if other people do it, and the reason telemarketing is so ubiquitous is that (like spam) it's otherwise so cost effective. I'm raising their cost of doing business, one hopes by enough to change their habits.