The Federal Trade Commission's National Do Not Call Registry is a good idea - it promises fewer telemarketing calls if you sign up. The problem is that the promise is of FEWER, not NO telemarketing calls - there are plenty of loopholes in it. Among those exempted: charities, political organizations, survey companies, and - get this - any company with which you have an existing business relationship (so if you have ever bought or spoken to a company in the past, they can continue to hound you!). And since they don't have to stop till after October 1, companies can try to establish a "business relationship" with you before that.

But there's a more immediate problem with the registry and it's related to technology. To register, you go to DoNotCall.Gov and put in your phone number. But that's not enough. You must verify your registration. To do that, you have to reply to an e-mail the site sends you. Unfortunately, this hasn't been happening properly. Some folks don't look out for the verification e-mail. But, for about 25 percent of the users, the problem is that the verification e-mail gets treated by their e-mail programs as junk e-mail. Pretty ironic.

So what can you do? If you have signed up and not gotten the verification e-mail, check your program's "junk mail" or "bulk mail" folder. It might be in there. Too bad the FTC didn't think of this possibility and plan for it in advance.

Incidentally, this situation happens with other messages, too, on services like Yahoo Mail and Hotmail. For me, my father-in-law's messages automatically get filtered into the junk-mail folder. While I can see why some folks would want their in-laws' mail treated as junk, I actually like hearing from my father-in-law and end up wasting my time doing double work - checking my regular inbox and then the junk-mail folder.

BONUS SITE FOR JULY 4: If you haven't seen it yet, you have to try out the virtual fireworks over the Statue of Liberty at http://home.neo.rr.com/schrimpf/rita/lady_liberty/liberty_dl.htm

One of the best fun sites I have ever seen.

Resources:

• National Do Not Call Registry
  
• Lady Liberty Fireworks