Legal Issues Concerning Cell Phone Directories

A phone directory which aggregates residential phone numbers is very common and most of the people know it under the name of White Pages. Such directory has existed for many years and although there were a lot of arguments and discussions about the privacy issues associated with such a directory, Whites Pages are still publicly available. There is of course chance for phone number holders to opt out from such a directory without any fees or further consequences. Usually you just have to fill some forms, send them to the directory operator and wait a few weeks to get procedures finished.

Due to the fact that White Pages are accessible for everyone which means telemarketers as well, US authorities decided to create a few regulations which could protect phone users from harassment. They decided to launch a National Do Not Call Registry which is simply a list of phone numbers that cannot be contacted for any marketing reason. There are some exceptions which allow telemarketers to call such numbers but as a general rule, when the phone numbers is listed in the registry, they are forbidden to call them. Fines for violating this rule are so high, that most of the telemarketers abide by it so to avoid paying huge fines.

Although there was an idea to create a cell phone directory similar to the White Pages, but there were to much controversy about it and finally Congress has given up and no such thing has been launched. Most of the arguments in favour were favoring telemarketers who have a strong lobby in the US Congress. Fortunately, the arguments in favour of privacy won. On the other hand, a few companies assembled their own directories in accordance to the US law. They couldn't put all the US cell phone numbers in the directory like it's in White Pages, but they had to get each cell phone holder's consent. Since the companies wanted to possess as many records as possible, the costs of such operation were enormous. The cell phone users who have allowed the company to operate their details also allowed them to resell the data which means that such information can be sold to the reverse cell phone companies.

People who are listed in cell phone directories have a simple method of opting out from such lists. The only thing required is to just fill in a form and send it to the company which possess his data. However, he should remember that there a few companies in the market and the opt out form should be sent to each of them individually.

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