{"id":62175,"date":"2026-08-06T15:46:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T15:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/62175\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T15:46:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T15:46:10","slug":"france-bans-cold-calling-telemarketers-boing-boing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/62175\/","title":{"rendered":"France bans cold-calling telemarketers – Boing Boing"},"content":{"rendered":"

France’s ban on unsolicited solicitations comes into effect next week<\/a>, protecting consumers from telemarketers and other intrusive sales pitches. Acknowledging that its “opt-out” system (as found in other countries) had only served the hucksters, the Fourth Republic is trying something new: actually stopping them.<\/p>\n

Now, “businesses are prohibited from contacting consumers without their prior consent,” said Alice Vilcot, chief of staff at the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Prevention of Fraud. “That consent can be withdrawn at any time.”<\/p>\n

The government says the law is a response to years of consumer complaints. Authorities estimate that about three-quarters of people in France receive at least one unsolicited sales call every week, and many receive more.<\/p>\n

Serious fines, too: of up to $435,000 per call for the company and $87,000 for indivudal callers themselves. The loopholes: you can opt-in (for example, tricked or dark-patterned <\/a>into checkbox consent) and be called “if they already have a contractual relationship” with you.<\/p>\n

France’s new law has raised concerns in Morocco, where the minister of employment, Younes Sekkouri, told lawmakers up 50,000 jobs were at risk in the country’s call centers.<\/p>\n

Germany has also banned telemarketing calls<\/a>. The U.S. has an ineffective “Do Not Call” registry<\/a> with so many exceptions it effectively facilitated the modern telemarketing industry. The U.K. has a similar<\/a> opt-out system<\/a>, with stricter rules and fines for calling people who opt out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can measure the generations by how they answer these calls. Boomers just answer all of them and get had. Gen X applies screening and interaction heuristics that don’t work and get angry. Millennials anxiously avoid answering<\/a>, then pick up because they don’t want to miss out. Zoomers pick up without answering<\/a>. Gen Alpha doesn’t pick up<\/a>. Gen Beta don’t have phones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France’s ban on unsolicited solicitations comes into effect next week, protecting consumers from telemarketers and other intrusive sales…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5,7854,38596,38597],"class_list":["post-62175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-france","tag-gadgets","tag-phones","tag-telemarketing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}