Letter to the editor

Recently I commented on phone scammers and advertisers who were stealing local phone numbers to insert in their caller ID systems to trick people into answering the phone.

That same problem was happening all over the country but the good news is that a long story in another publication told of a lot of progress being made toward enforcing the no-call registry.

Progress is being made by federal agencies, phone companies, phone manufacturers, app designers, and the computer nerds toward putting a stop to unwanted calls, scams and number thefts.

The details are too long to even summarize here but there are a few important details. For instance, I did not realize that the original no-call registry actually included cell phones. So, if someone like me never put the cell number on the registry, it needs to be done. Also, if someone changed their landline number, the new number also needs to be registered.

Facts about the no-call registry are available on Wikipedia. It has a lot of history of the no-call registry that the public might find illuminating. The law was possibly the most popular law ever passed as indicated by over 70 percent of the population jumping on the sign-up list quickly. Two politicians sponsored the law at a time that unwanted calls were getting so bad that most people simply quit answering their phones and just checked their answering machine from time to time. The politicians worked with the president and federal agencies to work out how the millions of requests would be handled if the law passed. It also was one of the very few laws to be passed without any support from lobbyists.

Unwanted phone calls had been especially bad at meal times and a wide range of citizens were being bugged: rich, poor, sophisticated, elite, even crooks. But despite so many people glad to see the law passed, it was delayed for two years and required additional legislation and appeal courts to finally get the law put to use in 2003. You could look at Wikipedia to see how it had been stalled.

An old saying is “a man's home is his castle” and apparently a lot of people do not want to be attacked in their own castle by their own phone.

Jack Fisher, former optimist