Have you heard about this charity ? :Part 2

No, TheBBG, I have not contacted any politician about this particular issue because I have been contacting them about many other, probably more important issues. I also firmly believe that our modern politicians are not responsive to real problems that effect ordinary people but are more concerned with staying in office long enough to collect a nice parliamentary pension.
Howver, this issue of phone abuse by salespeople and criminals has become such a major problem that I know a number of people who have dropped a hard line home phone because of “nuisance” calls. It is appalling to me that we can block unwanted calls easily on our mobile phones but the major phone companies do not make it easy for us to do that on our home phone. This is where I would like to see Government action. With modern technology it should be possible to trace the origin of the criminal spam calls from India and elsewhere, and with the asked for help of the Indian (and other) governments, catch and punish the criminals. My 91 year old father stopped answering his phone because these criminals kept phoning and I know many vulnerable people have lost money to them. I simply can’t believe that nothing can be done about it. I know this is going beyond the origonal topic of so called charity survey callers, but to me the whole issue of criminal and nuisance phone calls should be addressed.

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They use similar tech to avoid the issue of being traced. They can also generate numbers to call from almost all day long.

If you trace them another suspect business will start up almost immediately if you can even manage to get something done about the first one. What they are doing is certainly against Australian Law but then you have to navigate the foreign law as well. I don’t mean that we shouldn’t do something, I just mean it is a huge issue to overcome when it may not be enforced as strictly overseas as it may be here.

Mobile phones are not immune to this problem and if they keep changing their calling number you can run out of room in your phone’s block list very fast. It depends on how persistent/annoying they want to be. It may be easier to create a Whitelist for your phone than have a block list on it. Of course this stops “Private Number” calls so may not be the answer depending on your particular needs. As we move to more VOIP services for our “fixed lines” with the NBN, whitelists may become more common as most VOIP services support whitelisting.

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grahroll, You obviously know more about the technicalities of this problem than I do. I hate to think the scammers will continue to get away with their activities as I know many, especially elderly people, have had money stolen by these criminals. The problem with a white list solution is that it automatically makes it harder for any one whom you have not contacted before, and is therefore not on your white list, to contact you. What I would like is a system whereby if you receive a call on your land line from a number that is undesired, you simply press a “block” button on your phone and it is permanently blocked. Telstra has some sort of “Block” button but I think their system is rather involved. Optus can offer me nothing at all in the way of blocking undesired numbers. As I said, I can see this issue as being a further reason for people to stop having land lines and I would consider that to be a big mistake.

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As @grahroll wrote, the caller ID numbers are easily faked as well as randomised. You could add numbers to a ‘block list’ forever and not get even the first real boiler room scammer as they use number after number after number.

Thus a ‘block this number button’ would be futile and could lead to more not less frustration when it did not have the anticipated outcome of actually blocking anyone let alone scammers.

Then there is the private number - no caller ID. Common for some businesses and government agencies. My partner and I both worked at government agencies where all outgoing calls were ‘private numbers’. How does one block or receive what could be a very important call or international scammers?

Again as @grahroll wrote mobiles are the same. In these times of VOIP ringing a mobile can be cheaper than ringing a landline. While many if not most mobiles have some facility to block calls it is still a never ending list with similar dramas to the land-line problem.

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I refuse to believe that nothing can be done about this. The day criminals take over our lifestyle is avery sad day indeed.

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An analogy of how addressing the bad guys often traps the innocent bystanders are the ramifications of FATCA for US citizens. Details would be off topic but ‘regular’ US expat citizens have quite a burden because the US grabbed for taxes from fleeing non-combatants during the American civil war, and more recently legislated to address international money laundering by criminals and the wealthy hiding money.

Depending on the jurisdiction some countries do not allow fake caller-IDs but that is a hackable feature; and some only allow sales of phone numbers for the country of the card billing address. Global nomads often have good reasons for wanting globalised ‘local’ numbers in different countries, but they are already caught up in places. It will only get tighter…

Criminals are mostly ingenious or stupid; the former are the problems. They have already had a significant impact and will continue to do so because criminal law is by its nature reactive.

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There are steps a user can take to lessen the impact, however it is not a cure all. It is some steps of what you can do to reduce calls from businesses you provide details to for surveys and such but it also works for the cold callers.

Obtain a silent number or have your current number made a “silent” one.

Next step is register your number with the DNCR (this will not stop all calls but it is a necessary step)

Then once registered do not provide this number to any business other than necessary ones eg Power Company, Govt Departments such as Centrelink, your Doctor. Be harsh with your judgement of who to trust with your number, and if you use the techniques outlined just below here you may judge some of the contacts are to get the “throw away number” instead.

Read the following previous post of mine (it references competitions but the techniques also work for cold callers):

The silent number will take some time to show results (usually between 12 to 24 months) and it will not completely eradicate cold calls but it will help reduce them significantly.

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Over the past few days I have realised that many company webforms, including charities, will not accept inquiries or donations by card unless a phone number is entered. It apparently does not matter what phone number is entered so the number for the Honourable Minister for Communications might be appropriate.

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This doesn’t affect me anymore, but I would fully support a do-not-call approach that was all inclusive - you either opt in for any unsolicited call, or opt-out for all of them. I have little enough time to talk to people I actually know :slight_smile:

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And so it continues . Over the last 4-5 days the land line would ring , I would answer , nobody there .The incoming numbers were these 061730734207 and 061730734209 . Today being the 28-04-2018 the phone rung twice in the morning . Both dead calls but those numbers . The third time it rung it was a person from my Charity Survey .com again . /

For the sake of this post I let them talk longer this time . They told me I could opt out by visiting their web site . Only problem is you have to virtually tell them your life story to opt out ??? The phone person already had my address which I’m not happy about . He thought he was talking to my brother . I’ve since checked his computer and deactivated Chrome auto fill etc /

The first question was my age bracket . I hung up knowing what would come next . " What is the average annual income of the household etc etc ." Be careful I think that in opting out , he was most emphatic and repetitive on this point , you would be opting " in " for a barrage of unwanted calls from other call centres .

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I donate to a lot of charities but if I get calls from a charity ( or similar) I tell them I never donate to anyone asking for money by phone and let them know that I will now take that charity off of my donation list because they called me. that seems to stop them doing it

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An interesting take on a charity and how well regulated they are. An entrepreneurial leader exposed.

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I have noticed a few ads on webpages recently offering raffle tickets for muscle cars including one last week with a prize of 2 Ford Mustangs.

I never read any of them but perhaps some or all of them were scams.

Perhaps that very much depends on whether they were run by charlatans with “telepathic powers”.

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Me too!
Although the actual charity did not grab my attention, and I ignored them.

Is there a susceptible group of targeted ticket buyers that identify with the charity described and the prize?

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I can certainly identify with the prize.

image

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Yes, I’ve been contacted by these people and I do not like them one little bit! And I have told them so in no uncertain terms.
Every time they use a different number which, in itself, sets off huge alarm bells for me.
Why go to such lengths to hide your contact number?
They are an absolute nuisance and need to be reigned in very severely.
I DO NOT TRUST THEM ONE INCH.

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Welcome to the forum @the.sceptic . Thanks for your input .

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I just had a call from the my charity survey as well. I don’t mind doing surveys as I know from doing post-grad studies how helpful it is to be able to get responses. However I was concerned when I baulked at giving my address details that they then gave it to me. They already had all the details. Why do they need to know when it is only a survey. Then kept asking questions about me.

I ended up politely saying I am wanting to opt out of the survey a couple of times while the caller was trying to get me to answer ‘just a few questions more’. In the end I hung up over the buts but now feeling uncomfortable, vulnerable and unhappy that I’ve been quite rude but had already said more than in hindsight I liked.

Am hoping they were legit but just in case I suggest it may not be wise to answer. Didn’t seem to be easy to stop (without being rude) or respectful of anonymity that I would have liked.

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Thank you to those who have contributed to this forum.

They called me this morning on my land line and I took part in the survey thinking it was just research. Then an hour later, I received calls from 6 different charities in a row. This is uncomfortable as I like to choose who I donate to. I do not like being cold called by charities asking for money. Thanks to this forum, I just filled in the opt out register by googling my charity.

Hopefully they don’t call again.

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Welcome to the community @DDT Di . I hope you succeed in being left alone by these cold canvassing calls .

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