Good news for those of us who've endured countless interruptions at the hand of this widespread phone spam: The FTC is finally cracking down on those automated "Your warranty is about to expire" spammer phone calls—but only after a US Senator received a call on his personal phone.


Photo by TheGiantVermin

This telemarketing/spam organization has been placing 1.8 million calls per day, whether you are on the Do-Not-Call list or not. Once you pick up the phone, you hear an automated message telling you "This is the final notice that the factory warranty on your car is about to run out. Press two and we'll pretend to remove you from this list."


The scammers made the mistake of placing an automated call to Senator Charles Schumer on his cell phone during a meeting; afterwards he called a press conference to rail against the scammers. The FTC finally cracked down on the scammers with an injunction and an attempt to force them to return the estimated $10 million in fraudulent earnings from the scheme.

This particular telemarketing scheme has been spamming at least two of the editors here at Lifehacker for months now, so we're very pleased to see the government finally doing something about it. Makes you wonder what would happen if Congress actually had to personally deal with email spam.

F.T.C. Cracks Down on Car-Warranty Robocalls [NY Times]