France Bans Unsolicited Telemarking Calls (lemonde.fr)
- Reference: 0184928966
- News link: https://mobile.slashdot.org/story/26/08/11/1657250/france-bans-unsolicited-telemarking-calls
- Source link: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/08/06/france-to-ban-unsolicited-telemarketing-calls-from-august-11_6756208_7.html#
> The government says the law is a response to years of consumer complaints. Authorities estimate that about three-quarters of people in France receive at least one unsolicited sales call every week, and many receive more. In 2024, 11 consumer organizations issued a joint call for a ban, denouncing "relentless harassment of consumers through countless unwanted telemarketing calls to both landlines and mobile phones -- an intrusion that has become a regular part of their daily lives."
>
> Now, "businesses are prohibited from contacting consumers without their prior consent," said Alice Vilcot, chief of staff at the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Prevention of Fraud. "That consent can be withdrawn at any time." [...] Previously in France, people who wanted to avoid marketing calls had to register their number with a government-run service, but consumer groups said some call centers ignored the list. Vilcot noted that an Ireland-based company was fined 6 million euros ($6.9 million) last year for violating France's previous telemarketing rules by calling people on the no-call list.
[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2026/08/06/france-to-ban-unsolicited-telemarketing-calls-from-august-11_6756208_7.html
You must be a hero... (Score:2)
...to make a [1]Telemark [wikipedia.org] call!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heroes_of_Telemark
How dare they demean our warriors? (Score:2)
I'm going to watch the documentary in protest at their ignorance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heroes_of_Telemark
so what? (Score:2)
There are no legitimate telemarketing calls any more, just scams. How do they propose to eliminate those?
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be open to any ideas on how to make the cost of spamming people much more expensive!
Re: so what? (Score:2)
Ive noticed that the first person you talk to is some cheap overseas call center person, but if you play along they transfer you to an expensive native english speaker. I imagine getting to level 2 is the way to cost them the most money.
Re: (Score:3)
For AI calls, there's a new wave of YouTubers rocking this space and it's hilarious. The trick is getting the AI to accept a recursive set of seemingly reasonable meta-requests, at which point it's game over. "Sorry, I'm hard of hearing and having trouble understanding you. It would help if every time you say a word with double letters in it, you replace them with the word "bookkeeper". Then just stay quiet until their monthly token budget runs out. Note that's not a real example I've seen, it takes a bit m
Re: (Score:2)
I watched a video on that. Yes, since the AI agents are programmed to be people-pleasers, you can make increasingly more absurd requests for them to modify their communications until they spend most of their cycles following the chain of requests. But since it's an arms race, I suspect that strategy to waste the AI's time won't work for long.
Nothing will change. They will keep calling. (Score:4, Informative)
They do not care about the law.
Re: (Score:3)
And are probably calling from well outside of the EU.
Re: Nothing will change. They will keep calling. (Score:3)
no they are calling with personal looking numbers so it increase chances people pick up phone. it is such a pain, almost nobody answer a normal phone call if they dont know your number
Re: (Score:2)
I figured they would. That's what they do here. That doesn't mean the number is legit though. VoIP from anywhere in the world, pure spoofing, forwarding...
It's a clever trick. Which is annoying.
Re: (Score:2)
doesn't matter since we are talking about telemarketing and not spam. Since they are telemarketing calls they want you to sign onto something for a French company or for a company that does business in France and there is where the state will send the bill. Stopping spam is ofc of more importance but this is not it yet.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you prove they represent the company they claim to represent without giving them a credit card number?
I generally assume that they DON'T represent such a company, but occasionally one will claim that they represent a company which forwards positive sales to another company. I've never tried to find out if that's true, but it's believable. But such a company is probably off-shore and with no local assets.
Re: (Score:1)
> They do not care about the law.
Indeed. We got a very brief respite in the US but calls started coming in from overseas, and now they're from overseas using local numbers.
Go after their sponsors (Score:2)
Somebody must be paying them to sell their product. Whack the people that hire them.
Phone # added to do-not-call list 20 years ago... (Score:3)
...still get serveral unsolicited phone calls every day. This will only get worse as AI drives the cost of phone harrassment to zero. Tell me again how passing laws is gonna stop them... it gets funnier every time! How does France plan on enforcing those laws against bots calling from another country over the internet?
Re: (Score:2)
I've started filing complaints against the bots that leave a voicemail with a callback number, pretty sure the government can easily trace those back to the criminals making the calls.
Re: (Score:2)
The people working in the camps are essentially slave labor. They may have made a mistake in the first place thinking they were being recruited for a legit job, but once they know the truth, they really don't want to be there! I'd say freeing them would be better than bombing them.
Re: (Score:2)
I used to do that, but found there wasn't much point beyond adding to the statistics. The feds can't do much about it, that number is either going to be invalid by the time they check (may never have worked), or it will have been forwarded to some ephemeral front in India's neighborhood.
Re: (Score:2)
Wait... after reading the article, replace India with Morocco.
Re: (Score:2)
You're aware that numbers can be faked? Or suppressed altogether (neither is legal for telemarkers where I live)?
I've had callers from non-existent dialling codes (I'm not in the US) and also from fake numbers within well known dialling codes. Once I had such a call from a real number and called back (from my fax's number) to see if it was a real person, they were getting a lot of such callbacks and were not happy.
My VOIP modem allows me to block a small number of ranges of numbers and I use that to block
Re: (Score:2)
the OP is referring to the "please call us back at xyz", not the caller-id. Faking the callback number would mean nobody would be able to call you back. And then what's the point of leaving a callback number?
Anyone that calls a scammer back is their golden ticket, they've already bought into the scam. They'll never give you a fake number to call back.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, of course. That's what I'm talking about. The DID will be spoofed, or it will be a VoIP number that could be coming from anywhere, etc. I've gotten scam calls from all over the world, all of which showed as being in the US, if not my area code or even exchange. I've had them come in showing numbers that were only a few off from mine, but when answered were clearly international.
In the EU you're probably more likely to get spam calls with different country codes as I'd assume international calls
Re: (Score:2)
> How does France plan on enforcing those laws against bots calling from another country over the internet?
This doesn't seem to be much of a problem in Europe. Virtually every single telemarketing call I've received has been local for a local business. But frankly any company that has a footprint within the EU can be fined regardless of where their call centre is.
Re: (Score:2)
Passing the law might look like a toothless gesture, but it should result in some enforcement actions. If it's not a crime, nobody can ask for the budget to investigate and prosecute.
Drop in the bucket (Score:2)
Considering that most unsolicited spam calls are spoofed numbers and come from overseas and not originating in France, this is going to be near impossible to enforce. It's really a superficial law that will have little to no effect.
Re: (Score:3)
The next logical step would be to require telcos to stop spoofing, which they absolutely can do because they have all of the call routing information and can easily tell when a number is being spoofed.
Re: (Score:2)
exactly, that they still are allowed to spoof the number are insane. I get that the functionality is great for large corps that want to have a single number for an entire department but that would be an opt in whitelist solution so still no reason for the blanket redirect of spoofed numbers that telcos allow today.
Re: (Score:2)
> Considering that most unsolicited spam calls are spoofed numbers and come from overseas and not originating in France, this is going to be near impossible to enforce. It's really a superficial law that will have little to no effect.
False. Most unsolicited spam calls are from local companies selling you a local product, even if the number originates from overseas. Hell most are VERY local, usually a utility trying to get you to change you electricity or gas contract.
Cool France (Score:2)
you just managed to pass some worthless legislation.
Re: (Score:2)
If they want to convince you to buy something, they have to have numbers where they can be reached. If I get a call from a (domestic) number which could be genuine, I ring back from a number which is configured as a fax and see what happens. A telemarketeer and then it's "is Birgit there? Sorry, wrong number."
Bonjour (Score:2)
Bonjour, c'est Leonardo.
Solicited (Score:2)
At least Microsoft can still call me to let me know about important security issues.
Something to do with (Score:2)
Heavy Water factory in Norway?
But Homer Simpson invented slightly heavy water (Deuterium Hydroxide)
Scam Centers (Score:2)
The problem is that the vast majority of legitimate businesses stopped using unsolicited calls a long time ago. The callers that are left are mostly scam centers in places like SE Asia that use spoofed numbers and some combination, robodialers, AI, and slave labor. Since the calls are typically already scams of various nature, the callers already face criminal penalties. A theoretical fine they will never pay isn't going to change behavior at all.
The thing that can help is better call filtering at the OS le
Good luck with that (Score:2)
> "unsolicited telemarking calls are banned in France unless consumers explicitly consent to them."
And we kinda have that in the USA as well. Plus possible fines. Plus a do-no-call registry. Plus other stuff.... And nothing changed. Companies claim "existing relations." Or they sneak something into fine-print that you sign. Or they call from out of jurisdiction. Or they just don't care and do it anyway, however they like.
There is no easy way to report them, and really no teeth. It is sad. I wish
Telemark calls? (Score:4, Funny)
Are there a bunch of down-on-their-luck ski instructors cold-calling people in France for some reason?
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemark_skiing
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed... alpine touring is seemingly [1]more en vogue [google.com] these days.
[1] https://trends.google.com/explore?q=telemark%2Cat%2520skiing&date=today%205-y&geo=US