[This is an update to a posting I made a few days ago. Looks like the situation is not as bad as once throught – sparky]
In the last week I’ve lost count of how many people have forwarded me an email claiming that everyone’s mobile phone number is about to be handed over to telemarketers. I even have a reply which I cut and paste to people. It’s not true. Some carriers are trying to offer numbers to a 411 service but it will be entirely opt-in, it won’t be put in a book, will only be available on a per-request basis and it will still be totally illegal for telemarketers to call your mobile phone. To their credit, the majority of the people who forwarded it to me did so asking if it was real — noting their own skepticism. However, it appears not everyone was so skeptical, as the national Do Not Call list received a sudden influx of 3 million new registrations in the past two weeks, which clearly beats the 200,000/per week they were used to receiving. There’s nothing wrong with putting a mobile phone number on the Do Not Call list, but that phone number shouldn’t be called whether or not it’s on the list. And this potential directory isn’t going to change that at all.
Originally from Techdirt