Hong Kong officials urged to require cold-callers use identifiable numbers
Suggestion comes after case where woman hung up on hospital staff 18 times thinking they were unwanted marketers
The government should force cold-callers in the city to have certain digits at the start of their phone numbers, so Hongkongers can recognise them and ignore the call if they want, a legislator has said.
That came after a doctor posted online about a woman who ignored 17 calls from hospital staff who were trying to tell her her husband had been in a car accident.
She had assumed they were telemarketing calls.
Information technology sector legislator Charles Mok said the government should step up regulation via measures like licensing, setting up a centralised “do-not-call” registry and mandating identifiable phone number prefixes that only cold-callers would use.
“Of course, this would affect the industry, but for users and residents, this would be most welcome, and certainly none of these calls would be from the hospital,” he said on a radio programme on Thursday.