Privacy is Dead - Or Is It?

There was once upon a time in this country a saying that "A Man's Home is his Castle". While this is still true to a certain extent, one of the true virtues of having your own home was the notion of leaving the outside world at the door, entering a world of one's own making and enjoying the privacy of one's own domain.

The only intrusions into this world of comfort was the newspaper, the TV or radio when we chose to let them intrude. We chose when to listen to the radio, when to watch TV or to read the newspaper. Telemarketers crash into our world when they choose too, we have no control of when they will interrupt our dinner with the sound of a ringing telephone begging to be answered. Who knows, the call could be from a relative who is injured or dying, could be from the boss with an emergency that affects our job security, could be from one of our children stranded at the mall or on the roadside with mechanical problems, or it could be from someone who we have never met, trying to sell us something we do not want and who seems to know far too much about our affairs.

Telemarketers are a devious lot. They pretend to be our best buddy to close the sale, they don't care if we were in the middle of helping our child with their homework, or were giving the baby a bath, or changing a diaper or heaven forbid, sitting on the toilet ourselves. They intrude with all the grace of an elephant chasing a bull in a china shop. They never apologize for the interruption, often they are so bored, you have to say hello twice before they respond to your answering the phone. Feel like giving the telemarketer on the phone a piece of your mind? Don't bother, they are the bottom of the barrel, they are the minimum wage folks being paid to make the sales and take the abuse, they've heard it all, they are immune.

I fell into the trap a number of years ago, I used to be nice, heard them out, then I'd politley declined, say good-bye and wait for the next call. I was getting calls 2 or 3 times a night from different people, selling anything from cemetary plots to magazines, vacations, services, and even devices to combat telemarketers. Well, I've come up with a few of my own methods to combat these intrusions and I'm willing to share them with you.

Gil's Stop Telemarketing Tactics:

1. Use CallerID! You'll be amazed at the number of telemarketers who call with "out of area" or "Blocked" in the CallerID window. Seems these indications come when someone pays to block themselves from being displayed on your paid for CallerID service. Telephone company makes money on both ends. We only answer calls from people we know. All of our phones are capable of displaying the CallerID information. Occasionally, instead of waiting for the 4 rings to go by before the answering machine activates I'll hit the answer button and then immediately hang-up the phone. Unwanted calls are down 20%.
2. Get an answering machine that answers calls with no callerID information after the first ring. Casio and other companies make these machines. If a call comes in with no callerID, they answer the call after the first ring, if the phone continues to ring then the callerID information is available and warrants a look at the callerID windows to see if this is a call we want to answer.
3. There are a few political things you can do, you can be sure to vote for candidates who support further regulation of the telemarketing industy.
4. Don't fill out entries into contests for free goods or services. You have to provide your mailing address and phone number on these entries and will end up on a telemarketing list eventually. Your phone will ring and unwanted mail will fill your mailbox.
5. Refuse to provide your address and phone number for fundraisers. My donation has never been turned down when I refused to provide my "personal" information on the fundraising form.
6. Use cash instead of checks when buying goods. Your check has a lot of personal information, address and phone numbers that some retailers will harvest for their personal mailing lists or to sell to telemarketers.
7. Read the fine print when buying extended warranties on products you buy. Often you give consent to be contacted in the future about special offers or services. Sears does this.

This is just a few of the things I do to combat the assaults into my personal life. I have resorted to managing my own e-mail server to combat SPAM, but that is an issue for another day...

Final thought - The telemarketing industry must be making alot of money. It is a huge industry spending alot of money to mount these assaults into our homes. But enough is enough, it is time for our elected government to pass legislation enacting a national opt-out registry and force the telemarketing industry to pay heavy fines for each violation of a citizens descision to opt-out of being subjected to these obnoxious phone calls into our Castles!