At 09:47 AM 2/02/01 -0800, Matthew Sanderson wrote:
>Beware...
>
>Last year it was run by some outfit called Australian Exhibition Services,
>who sold the personal details that my work colleagues gave them on to
>direct marketing companies - as far as I could tell at the time, without
>first obtaining their consent. I had the paranoia^H^H^Hsense to give them
>a false name etc.
>
>If it's run by the same clowns this year, expect a load of direct mail,
>phone calls from telesales parasites, the whole works. Best bet is to
>register as Bob Frobnitz of Widgets Pty Ltd... <sigh>
Unfortunately they don't need your permission to on-sell this information -
I believe that there is some arcane clause in the "conditions of entry" to
the exhibition that allows them to do this.
And registering as the aforementioned Mr Frobnitz (BTW, Widgets Pty Ltd is
a registered company in NSW) will only see them asking to see
identification before allowing you entry if there are several hundred of these.
One of the worst areas for this abuse is the telephone book - there is no
way you can stop telesales parasites from looking names up. or using CD
copies of the phone book intheir marketing campaigns. However, there is a
way to frustrate them;
Under Australian telecomunications legislation (regardless of what Telstra
tell you), there is no way they can forrce you to have your phone number
listed in the phone book under your *real* name, or the name of the
account holder. Telstra will argue that this method is not legal, but I'm
registered in the phone book under
"J SMITH" - there are currently about 20 pages of them in Sydney.
So when a telesales parasite calls and asks to speak to Mr Smith (even if
they ask for John Smith), I just say NO and hang up. They rarely call
back. The other way of frustrating them is to ask for a 1800 number you
can call them back on, they set WVDIAL or DIALD to make repeated calls....:-)
All good fun..
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