Telephone game

A scare-email was forwarded to me today. It's funny because often these scare-emails mimic the game of "Telephone" in that the message keeps mutating as it travels, and in this particular case the message itself is about telephones! The forwarded email reads, in part:

Starting Jan. 1, 2005, all cell phone numbers will be made public to telemarketing firms. So this means as of Jan. 1, your cell phone may start ringing off the hook with telemarketers, but unlike your home phone, most of you pay for your incoming calls. These telemarketers will eat up your free minutes and end up costing you money in the long run. According to the National Do Not Call List, you have until Dec. 15th, 2004 to get on the national "Do not call list" for cell phones.

The message forwarder himself writes, by way of introduction:

I received the following imbedded e-mail which covers the fact that on Dec 15th telemarketers can start calling your cell phones.

This makes me chuckle. First, the scare-email, which contains no actual evidence or references of any kind to support its claims, is referred to as covering "fact." Second, the date for the onslaught of the telemarketing scourge has been bumped up to December 15th. And did you get that part about how the telemarketers will "end up costing you money in the long run"? What - do they sometimes make you money in the short run?

All this is not to say there isn't legitimate concern about erosion of cell subscribers' privacy. There exists a consortium of cell companies that want to put together a database; a "Wireless 411." The claimed motives are pure but cell users don't trust the companies. I don't blame them. For anyone who wants the skinny on this and possible implications, which are considerably more complicated than anything the chain emails dream up, I would suggest reading:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/cell411.asp

If you're still uneasy after reading that, you can always put your cell number (or any other phone number) on the national do-not-call registry. Notice that it's still just one registry - not a separate list for cell phones as the scare-email hilariously alleges - and there's no absolute final due date for registering. I find it easiest to register over the internet, at

http://www.donotcall.gov