NEWS: Cell Phonebook Coming Soon

GEEK: Cell Phonebook Coming Soon

Be prepared for everyone to know your cell phone number.

Could this be the beginning of a serious problem with cell phone telemarketing and text message spamming?

Editor's note: How many of you have recieved a telemarketing call on your cell already? How about an advertisement in the form of a text message? (Of course, the latter is nothing new-- I used to get advertisements sent to my text-capable pager years ago.)

How do you feel about having your cell number put into a phonebook?

wow, that SUCKS. i enjoyed the fact no one could call me if i didnt want them to.

Hopefully they don't consider printing this, what a waste. Not to mention the fact that it's bad enough when annoying friends get a hold of a cell phone number, imagine prank calls? Think of the hours wasted, the batteries recharged. This is crappy. If someone wants their cell number known, TELL PEOPLE.

< / end rant >

I've often said that as long as cell phone users are charged for the calls they receive as well as the calls they make, I'm not getting one. This is just further proof for me why I should wait.

Cell Phones scare me anyway.

I imagine if I had one, I would now be forced to treat it like my home line, let the machine screen the call.

I don't like the fact that someone can call me from a cell phone and I can't easily find out who it is.

well mine wont be on it, not if ive got anything to say about it.

yeah this is bad news. the thing that makes this different than publishing your land line number is that when someone calls your cell phone you have to pay for it. I can just imagine worst case scenario where you end up using all your minutes up fielding calls from random assholes or tele-marketers.

They really need to make this an OPT-IN type of situation.

we are lucky....think about caller ID..... just never answer your phone

while there at it .. it would be nice if they built in a do not call list and added everyone to that unless they specificaly opted to recieve anyoying, harassing sales calls.

i wonder if you could sue under the junk fax law for junk text messages as the premis of the law is its illegal to send somone un unsolisited fax message since it costs the reciever money.. somoene managed to argue email was a fax and won using that law...

Wow, You guys have to pay for incoming calls? Thats crazy. I wouldn't even have a phone if that was the case here.

I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to call a cell phone for unsolicited marketing purposes.

jinx

In france, a phone book already exist for cell phone. Customers can contact the telecom company to order it... We can be add to a "red list", for don't have ours numbers on this book. Mine's not in red list, and i never receive bad call.

Yeah, I got my first cell-IM-spam the other day, for a Viagara thing. I was tres pissed. I was going to call Sprint and ream them a new one... but I didn't. because i'm an apathetic twenty something.

Its also illegal to solicate in certain states (and if you're on the do not call list). Being in one of those states that prohibits phone solicitation, I still get more than my fair share of telemarketers.

I've gotten a total of two sales calls on my cell phone since I've been using one quite frequently for the last four years. All things have to start somewhere.

I better not get any prank calls or IM on my cell phone. I don the pay-as-you-go thing and I will be really pissed if some jerkwad uses up my time that way.

i put mine on the do not call list.

What a fucking nightmare this could turn out to be. It would be wise to draft legislation allowing the service provider to be held accountable for any unsolicted phone calls. Once you start compiling information like that it's just a matter of time before it get's out into the public domain. I'd be livid if I got a phone bill charging me a whack of money for calls I didn't want from people hawking crap.

What a crock of shit...

Most local phone companies actually charge on a monthly basis for an unlisted number. They better not charge to keep my number out of this bullshit.

By the way, many carriers do have plans where incoming calls do not count against your airtime. Nextel does, I know, but I think other carriers do too.