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.