Is The Do Not Call List Going to Expire?

The Do Not Call list was an innovation that many people were jubilant about. For years people had been bothered by telemarketing. They felt that it was unfair that people were able to call them, because they had never given their phone numbers out and did not wish for the calls to happen. Yet, telemarketers got phone numbers from a whole list of sources – from phone books, from the national phone directories, from all kinds of different places. This led to a huge jump in the number of telemarketing calls and unsolicited calls, and to people hating just having a phone in general.

Therefore, when the Do Not Call list was developed in 2003, it was met with a huge sigh of relief and with a lot of happiness. It was a phone number that you could call, and if you called it your phone number would suddenly become off limits for telemarketers. The list made certain numbers illegal for telemarketers to call. After about 30 days, you would stop getting telemarketing phone calls, and you could go back to looking forward to answering the phone. The DNC would be given to telemarketers, and if they called a number on it, they would be in trouble and have to pay huge fines.

However, at the time, there was one glitch in the DNC. When a person signed up for it, they were told that it would expire in 5 years. This meant that if you registered your phone number in 2003 when it began, you would have to re-register it in 2008. Each phone number would be kept on the DNC for 5 years, and then would be taken off. This regulation was at first added as a way of keeping the telemarketing industry happy. It was also added because the system was brand new and no one was sure of how it would work or what would happen in the coming years with it. Therefore, most people who signed up believed that five years later they would have to do so again. However, the biggest reason for the original 5 year expiration of the DNC numbers was legislation that was passed which would make the numbers expire after 5 years. This was done so that the numbers that were old, or unused would not stay in the DNC database. It would also help the cases where people had moved and now had different numbers. They believed that there would be no way to clean up the DNC and it would simply get out of hand. So, everyone was told that the numbers would need to be re-registered 5 years later.

However, it has recently been announced that this is not so. A law was passed that stated that the numbers on the DNC would not expire, and would remain there permanently. The law would go into effect after the initial 5 year period for some users, but they users were all promised that no numbers would be taken off of the databases. This was done because the DNC was widely popular, with more than 76% of all households registering their phone numbers. It was also done because it was thought that many people would forget to re-register, which would lead to their numbers again being available for telemarketers and to their frustrations. Also, in recent years, technology has become available that is used to clean out dead or not used numbers from the DNC. All of these factors rendered the 5 year expiration for the DNC list completely useless, and therefore it was decided that the numbers would remain in the list permanently. Therefore, if you have registered your phone number with the DNC, you don't have anything to worry about. Telemarketers will never be able to have access to your phone numbers, no matter what amount of time goes by.