ADVISORY/Junkbusters and Consumer Groups Argue for Strong Restrictions On Telemarketing in Meeting to Determine New Federal Regulation.

Business Editors

ADVISORY...for Wednesday (June 5)

--(BUSINESS WIRE)

What: The Federal Trade Commission will hold a public workshop 5-7 June on its proposed amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule, including the possibility of establishing a national no-call list. Junkbusters and other consumer and privacy groups will argue for strong restrictions on telemarketing in the new federal regulation.

The FTC's description of the workshop is available from its web site at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/05/tsrvenue.htm

The formal comments of privacy groups to the FTC are available at http://www.epic.org/privacy/telemarketing/tsrcomments.html

Where: Marriott Wardman Park Hotel 2660 Woodley Road, NW Washington, DC 20008

When: 5-7 June, 2002. The national no-call list will be discussed Wednesday morning; predictive dialers and abandoned calls on Thursday morning; the use of prisoners as telemarketers on Friday afternoon. A detailed agenda is available from the FTC's web site at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/tsr/agenda.htm

Who: Junkbusters President Jason Catlett will participate on panels Wednesday June 5th, and will be available for interviews throughout the week. Other consumer and privacy advocates include Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (202-483-1140) and Robert Bulmash of Private Citizen Inc. (1 800 CUT-JUNK). A complete list of participants is available at the FTC's web site http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/tsr/participants.htm

Why: Consumer advocates want subscribers nationwide to have a simple way to stop all telemarketing calls, which Congress asked for in a 1991 law but which was not been implemented in any federal rule. Advocates have long argued that current regulation is inadequate to protect consumers from the abusive practices of the telemarketing industry. One of the most hated practices includes "Dead Ringers," calls placed by large automatic dialing systems but abandoned after being answered because no representative was available to speak. Few consumers know the reason for these abandoned calls, and many fear they are being stalked as they are left saying "Hello? Hello? Hello?"

About Junkbusters: Junkbusters Corp. helps people get rid of junk messages of all kinds: spam, telemarketing calls, unwanted junk mail, junk faxes, and more. Its web site is a leading consumer resource on the control of junk communications.

Its popular Anti-Telemarketing Script can be printed from http://www.junkbusters.com/script.html on the Web. Junkbusters is a registered trademark of Junkbusters Corp.