Spam telemarketing has pretty much been made illegal barring some specific exceptions carved out by the TCPA. So, long story short, every time I manage to identify one of the spam callers calling my phone… I sue them and get paid. It’s turning out to be a pretty nice gig. =)
It’s really hard to identify some of these spam callers sometimes though. As you might imagine, they hang up when they sense any kind of danger, like asking for company names or website addresses. Right now for example, I have a call back number for this company, it works, but it has a vanilla voicemail and they are never going to call me back.
How could I get the owner of this phone number? Any advanced methods that aren’t the whois sites?
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No there is no way for the average person to identify the owner of a number.
In fact unless you work for the carrier of that number there’s no real way to identify them without going to the police. And even at that it’s only if they are harassing or threatening you.
Subpoena the carrier as part of a TCPA case against “john doe” ?
I get a HUGE number of spam calls due to my industry, so bad I had to change phone numbers. However I’ve kept my old numbers (ported to voip services and terminate with busy signals ATM) and they both still get about 30 calls a day from “we buy houses” spammers. Have been seriously considering TCPA suits since I have some credit card debt that needs paid off :)
Lol! I have totally considered this! Kind of want to save it as a last ditch effort, but I’m thinking there could be some opportunity in general testing with John Doe suits. I’ve leveraged bigger parties against defendants in the past, it’s very valid.
I would say your best bet is to go along with the caller as if you’re interested in whatever they are selling. Play dumb until you can actually get some verifiable information such as “who do I make the cheque out to and where do I mail it?”. Also “how do I call you back?” Just make sure you don’t give anyone you’re actual name or credit card number!
This has been the method so far. I understand since big companies like Do Not Pay have worked out something like fake credit cards for situations like this, going to try to get one.
What is your process to sue spam callers? Is it repeatable/scalable?
It’s completely repeatable and I’m about to do a batch for the first time. I already thought about this and I like the way you think. A lot of times now I send a demand letter and get a settlement agreement in 24 hours.
I’ll do a full breakdown tomorrow if you want.
What makes you think the caller ID you see on your display is owned by the person calling you? Most spam calls I get are neighborhood spoofing. I find most spam to be scam and scammers don’t use numbers belonging to them. Are you looking for the owner of the number or the person calling you as they are most likely different things. Unless you know someone work that works for the provider’s network that is willing to do illegal traps for you that you can’t use to sue someone, the only legal solution you have the info obtained by law enforcement. There is literally no real way of knowing anything about the call without the carrier providing CDR (call detail record) and SIP message traps to identify the source IP of the voip call.
This will be a kind of question over a question (I’m also curious to know :p), but I was in the progress of googling around “LIBD” and “CNAM” databases which is something my VoIP provider tell me is using to get caller id.
I know it is likely around caller id only, but maybe whatever company is offering such service may have more data availables?
Duuuude.
Theres this credit card that tells you every company that tries to charge the card so you get the whole business info. No need to hunt down the voip number and what not, just give them the credit card for whatever they claim they are selling and it never goes through but it gets all the info from their business. And unlike the phone info which could be fake, the info you get from the charge attempt is legit cause otherwise they could not get the money. You get the business name who to sue right off the bat.
I’m not on my computer but let me look for the info.