The DNC is a joke!

No, not the Democratic National Convention, although I'm sure the argument could be made. What I am referring to here is the the National Do Not Call Registry, a laughable effort to try to prevent people from being harassed by telemarketers and other nuisance calls. Set up by the Federal Trade Commission, the DNC Registry supposedly..."gives you a choice about whether to receive telemarketing calls at home. Most telemarketers should not call your number once it has been on the registry for 31 days." Well I can tell you, having been registered on this list since 2003, that it does not work.

Perhaps we have ourselves to blame, being a member of a shrinking demographic of households that have a land line (required for our security system), does that make you more susceptible? The phone rings many times a day, we've basically adopted a policy of just ignoring it and screening the message to see if it's a call that we actually would want to take. Most of the time, it's not. No, most of the time, it's either a telemarketer, scammer (You're computer may be infected with a virus...said in my best Indian accent), automated message/survey, or a dead line (a tactic I am told is just used to test whether you are home at certain times of the day). The called ID isn't much help, as it will describe Unknown Caller, a random location (City/State) where the call origniates, or some other gobbly gook. Every now and then, we get an interesting description, this one is my favorite:

I did discover a feature on my phone provider's website where I could block numbers, which I have done for the more persistent callers, but there are always more. If anyone out there knows how to get rid of unwanted callers, I'm all ears, the FTC and their DNC aren't getting it done.