Forgive my ignorance, but has telemarketing always been going on in the States? Does it depend on the State? Why does the register not work? Is there no organisation that hands out fines? What's going on that you can not protect yourself against intrusion in your own home/life?
What happens now is that legit companies are not calling anymore. It's only scammers. What they do is use a PBX or Voice Over IP system where they can set the caller ID themselves. When they call someone, they create a new number (sometimes daily, sometimes per call) that appears to be in your area code. So you report them to the Do Not Call registry, but the number is bogus, so the Feds have no way of knowing who actually called you or who to fine. If you ask who the company is on a call they'll either hang up on you or give a generic name like "Carpet Cleaners".
Telemarketing has existed a long time in the States. There is a national do not call list, and it works pretty well. However, scammers don't respect it, so you'll still occasionally get calls. Also, businesses with a "previous relationship" can call you. I once had to threaten a car dealer with legal action to get them to stop calling (I had test driven a car). A related problem I had was that I got a phone number that formerly belonged to a deadbeat. There were constant calls from debt collectors. It took about two years to convince them that they had the wrong number. Well, actually, most of them were pretty good because they can get in a lot of legal trouble if they harass the wrong person, but then the company would sell the debt to another company, and the calls would start again.
I thought the same. Where I live there's a register where you can suscribe, and if telemarketers call you then the company can be fined. Isn't there in USA such a thing?
Even if somebody calls using VoIP, they will mention their products, so I don't know why that would be an obstacle to identifying them.
"Telemarketer" nowadays means just anybody making annoying calls. I don't remember when was last time somebody who actually wanted to sell something has called. All the calls I am getting now are either asking for donations (which are exempt from do-not-call law, being a "charity"), doing a "survey" (also exempt) or are from criminals helping with my "credit card debt" , from "Windows security", from "IRS" etc. I imagine the criminals, already breaking more serious laws, would ensure they are not vulnerable to the do-not-call.
