Man-Machine FCC Rules Regarding Privacy of Telephone Numbers of People Who Call You

[Joe]

I am truly baffled by this.

I have a cellphone and service through Virgin Mobile. Recently, I've
been getting repeated crank calls that seemed to me to be part of a
scam.

So I wanted to look up the record of people who had called me. Virgin
Mobile has a feature on their website that looks like it would have
this information available, called "Talk History."

But when I looked at this information, it seems it only records the
information for outgoing calls.

I wrote Virgin Mobile about why it did not have the information about
incoming calls. I got the following reply:

"Thanks for contacting Virgin Mobile Customer Care.

We understand that this information is important for you. However we
are unable to provide you with such information due to our current
privacy policy.

Transaction History does not display phone numbers for incoming calls,
in keeping with FCC privacy regulations. Therefore these calls will
display your phone number for each incoming call.

We can provide you with up to 60 days of your account activity on our
website by following the steps below. This will display the numbers
you have called but not incoming calls.

Virgin Mobile can only provide these call records if you have a
subpoena or court order."

This does not make much sense to me. Why should the privacy of
incoming calls be protected from me? If I had tape-recorded my
voicemail when I checked it, I would have these numbers, since they
are read aloud to me by Virgin Mobile's "system" when the voicemail is
listened to.

I don't even know what search terms to use to try to look up these
" FCC privacy regulations."

Can anybody shed any light on these issues?

Thanks in advance for any information you can provide.


P.S. Virgin Mobile does not have the ability to "block" incoming
calls from any particular number. Some cellphones have apps that can
do this, but my inexpensive phone does not. I do not want to have to
go out and purchase an expensive "smart phone" just so I can block
crank calls.

 

[Chryssie]

When I receive calls from unknown numbers, I never answer. I go to Google and type in the number. A lot of the calls are telemarketers or similar and they often pop up on Phone Number Lookup
Sometimes there are instructions how to "opt out" . I do have an app on my smartphone to block calls and I use it a LOT.

 

[Second Summer]

Joe, that is ridiculous. I have Virgin Mobile in the UK, and my phone records all incoming numbers, except "unknown" ones.

 

[shyvas]

Joe, that is ridiculous. I have Virgin Mobile in the UK, and my phone records all incoming numbers, except "unknown" ones.

The phone will record the phone numbers but these incoming calls will not be given on your phone bill.

 

[Second Summer]

I can see how it would make sense that Virgin didn't keep records of the incoming numbers in order to protect people from Big Brother style surveillance. However, it sounds like they are recording the numbers, just that they won't give the list to Joe, which sounds ridiculous.

I know you're fond of your "dumbphone", Joe, but yes, if it were a little bit smarter it could record the numbers for you.

 

[shyvas]

I can see how it would make sense that Virgin didn't keep records of the incoming numbers in order to protect people from Big Brother style surveillance. However, it sounds like they are recording the numbers, just that they won't give the list to Joe, which sounds ridiculous.

I know you're fond of your "dumbphone", Joe, but yes, if it were a little bit smarter it could record the numbers for you.

The phone companies do keep a list of all incoming numbers but aren't allowed to release them. It's the same thing for the banks. People always want to know who has used their bank card in the event of a fraud. However, the banks aren't allowed to release this information.

 

[Second Summer]

The phone companies do keep a list of all incoming numbers but aren't allowed to release them. It's the same thing for the banks. People always want to know who has used their bank card in the event of a fraud. However, the banks aren't allowed to release this information.

OK, but why?

 

[shyvas]

OK, but why?

Privacy laws. In the event of receiving anonymous phone calls or using someone's credit cards, citizens may take the law into their own hands. Furthermore, making a phone call from a phone or using someone's bank credit doesn't necessarily mean that you know who the person is.

I do have an example but cannot discuss it as it happened at my work place.

 

[Calliegirl]

I've been receiving calls from the same company for about a year now and their real number never shows up. They are using some sort of program that blocks their actual number and displays a fake local one. My call history shows all incoming and outgoing calls except for these. Even the fake number they use that shows up on caller ID doesn't show up in the history.

I've called the FCC about it before to file a complaint when they were calling multiple times a day, they said there was nothing they could do and had no way of tracing the real number.

 

[Joe]

Joe, that is ridiculous. I have Virgin Mobile in the UK, and my phone records all incoming numbers, except "unknown" ones.

I agree that it is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous is that I have asked around about this, and I have not gotten any real information about why these rules were put into effect. I believe (but do not know) that these rules were not in effect two or three years ago.