Stop the Robocall Madness!

Rachel has been calling me more and more over the past week. Unfortunately, Rachel is a robot. You know this call: a robocall connects and Rachel congratulates you on being eligible for reduced rates on your credit card!

Curiously, the increase in calls comes after a Senate hearing in which Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) discussed Rachel and other similar schemes designed to defraud the public.

Senator McCaskill said these tricks violate a number of laws, including the do-not-call legislation. They try to extract from you financial information that can be used to defraud you outright or design a program to steal your identity and then take all your money.

She further noted that when you are offered the option to press 2 to be taken off the list, you are actually put on a hot list; you have proven to be a real person with a real phone number and so the calls continue.

I have probably received more than 1,000 of these calls over the past few years but I have managed to minimize them by quickly hanging up on sketchy "member services," "card services," or "toll-free" numbers. And, yes, I have a landline.

Cell phones get a different form of spam but I suspect some hear from Rachel a lot too. Or that tug boat operator who applauds you for winning a free cruise.

It blows my mind that the NSA has the technology to snoop on every American but apparently nobody can track down these schemers. Last year, the FTC even offered up $50,000 to anyone who could stop the madness. Still, these operations originate overseas so even if you could track them down, the local authorities would not necessarily cooperate to stop the scam.

I've written about the Nigerian scam letters we all get in our inboxes (or, if you're doing it right, spam boxes). I was told by a well-connected African economist that Nigeria does nothing to discourage these scammers although they put on a good show as if they care. In fact, according to my source, the Nigerian scam accounts for more than one-third of the entire Nigerian GDP. I assume that a similar situation exists for Rachel and her gang of crooks. McCaskill's numbers show telemarketing frauds cost Americans alone over $40 billion annually, and that may be conservative. Most of these fraudsters are in Eastern Europe and one must assume their work contributes to the GDP of the Ukraine.

While the American suckers are really to blame, exactly how these calls can be constantly fed into the phone networks without regulation is beyond my comprehension. How hard would it be to save the public (and the country) $40 billion by blocking these calls? I don't get it.

So the calls keep coming and everyone throws their arms in the air and acts as though they are trying. Well, you are not trying hard enough.