Online and telephone scams, and privacy increasingly at risk. THE consumers I'm under siege. Each of our online clicks leaves an imprint on our tastes and our consumption, and sometimes risks giving rise to a shower of emails, spam and phone calls trying to sell something and which, more and more often, turn out to be their own scams.
From the classic phishing (emails from fake banks or fake post offices, asking for current account or credit card data) down, there would have been 315 million, in 2015 alone, the victims of Cybercrime, according to the estimates reported by Enrico Orlandi, CEO of Hwg, a company specialized in consultancy and in the provision of IT security services.
The means to defend yourselfHowever, both online and on the phone, they exist. From basic precautions, such as extreme distrust of emails from unknown senders, and reluctance to disclose your bank details to anyone, Adblockers can block Ads (advertisements) and Cookies. As for wild telemarketing, we can defend ourselves by registering in the opposition register, i.e. the register so as not to be disturbed by call centers for promotional calls.
Unfortunately, however, one of the victims of the victory of the No vote in the constitutional referendum, and of the consequent resignation of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, could be the Competition law, launched two years ago by the former minister Federico Guidi and still stuck in the Senate, where it risks lying in eternity. The bill, in fact, contained various rules to counter the wild telemarketing.
Among the main proposals is that of extending the register of oppositions (that is, the register in which one can register so as not to be disturbed by promotional calls), also to numbers not present in the telephone directory and therefore also to mobile telephones, increasingly victims of wild telemarketing harassing phone calls.
Still remaining on mobile telephony, the Competition Law also aimed at eliminating the consents granted for the use of smartphones, resets too often granted lightly, and in ways that are not always very clear, by consumers, as suggested by the Privacy Guarantor.
Fortunately, the Competition Law, which appears to be increasingly at risk, is not the only proposal to combat overly aggressive commercial telephone campaigns. Other spun-off proposals to put a stop to harassing calls came from Senator Bonfrisco (Conservatives and Reformists), Senator Pezzopane (Pd) and Deputy Stefano Quaranta (Si-Sel).
The bill passed by former minister Guidi, however, seemed the safest way to put an end to such an unappreciated practice and defend citizens and consumers. The risk of it falling into oblivion is strong. In this case, defending yourself from wild telemarketing will remain very difficult.
