Fraudsters Abusing do-not-call list - What a Surprise!

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The story that the Canadian do-not-call registry is being sold to scam artists should be a non story. 

The Consumers' Association of Canada says it has been inundated with complaints from people who have been called by scam artists after placing their telephone numbers on the registry, which went into effect last September.

The do-not-call list was created to prevent telemarketers from contacting people who do not want to be pestered with uninvited sales pitches.

For companies to find out who they are not permitted to call, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission sells the list online for a fee. "You can buy any list you want of people who subscribe to the do-not-call registry online.

The whole of Toronto costs you 50 bucks for 600,000 names," Bruce Cran, president of the CAC, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

I have consistently railed about this myopic regulatory response.  Over a year and half ago, I predicted that people who put their name on do not call list would find that they were getting more and not less telemarketing calls - because the list would be sold.

Steve Levitt, writing at Freakonomics, disagrees and argues:

"The second thing that feels wrong about this article is that relative to any other list of phone numbers you could find, the do-not-call registry must be the least profitable one imaginable.

Why would a scammer want to call a list made up of people who have made it clear they do not want to be solicited over the phone?"

Why? Because they know that they will give into the temptation - getting rid of these calls appears a credible way to resist.  It isn't.  

Tyler Cowen agrees with me about telemarketing and being a mark:

"In contrast to Levitt, I would think that the people on that list are extremely prone to buy things from telemarketers."

You might as well wear a sign that says "I am a mark, please abuse me."

Buy an answering machine, screen your calls, and don't signal to the world that your identity is important enought to steal.