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The national Do Not Call list has had to deal with its share of rumors. Consumers and businesses alike have had to discern truth from fiction many times in the years since DNC laws were established.
The most recent whisperings about the effort have been that phone numbers soon will be knocked off the list.
While it's true that consumers on the list were supposed to have to re-register five years after it was implemented in 2003, officials from the Federal Trade Commission recently told a House committee that it would be best to keep the numbers on permanently. Legislation is proceeding in Congress to make that possible.
The list does go through a monthly scrubbing process–and has since it was implemented–to get rid of disconnected or redirected numbers.
Zachary Rice, director of government affairs for the Indianapolis-based American Teleservices Association, which represents companies that use call centers, said that was his group's main concern.
"We don't want to be calling people that do not want to be called, but if a phone number is disconnected or reassigned, those should be taken off the list because they may be reassigned to someone who wants us to call," he said.
Rice said the initiative has been good for consumers and not as painful as the telemarketing industry had thought it would be. Although some telemarketing employees were laid off, Rice said the vast majority of companies already had internal do-not-call lists.
The latest rumor flying around about the national registry isn't the only one to have popped up through the years. One that won't go away is that all unregistered cell phone numbers will be made available to telemarketers.
While cell phones can be registered on the Do Not Call list, there's no set deadline to do so, and there are still no plans to release cell phone numbers to telephone marketing companies.
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