Laws and Regulations

Wardialing and other automated telephony applications may be regulated by federal, state, and city laws. If you have any doubts about whether a given use of WarVOX is legal or not, please consult a legal expert. This is not legal advice and you are solely responsible for using WarVOX in a way that conforms with any applicable laws.

In the United States, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA - 47 C.F.R. Sec. 64.1200) was updated in 2003 to state "No person or entity may (7) Use any technology to dial any telephone number for the purpose of determining whether the line is a facsimile or voice line". Prior to 2003, the TCPA still outlawed the automated dialing of a wide range of lines, including those used for fire departments, poison control, law enforcement, hospitals, elderly homes, cell phones, paging services, mobile radios, and any service where the receiving party was charged for the call. For more information about how the TCPA restricts wardialing, please see the question entitled "Q. Someone just war dialed (automatically dialed) all the voice lines at my company to discover where the fax machines are. Is that illegal?" at http://www.junkfax.org/fax/basic_info/junk_fax_qa.htm.

In addition to the TCPA, wiretapping laws also come into play when any of the calls made by the wardialer are being recorded. Although most states allow a call to be recorded with the consent of only one party, twelve states do not, these include California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. Using a tool like WarVOX to record calls made to numbers within these states may be a violation of the state's wiretapping laws. For more information about call recording laws, please see http://www.rcfp.org/taping/.

On top of the federal TCPA laws and the state specific call recording statutes, many states impose additional restrictions on wardialing activities. For example, the Texas Penal Code Sec. 33A.03 states that "A person commits an offense if the person manufactures, possesses, delivers, offers to deliver, or advertises: (2) a telecommunications device that is intended to be used to: (B) conceal the existence or place of origin or destination of a telecommunications service." This statement can read to include any device which is capable of spoofing Caller ID and any VoIP device which does not have a valid return number (softphones or Skype with no DID). The definition of a "Telecommunications device" clearly includes a Computer, so the only recourse appears to be the "intent" of the device. In the case of wardialers, the intent is not to conceal the source of the call, but it may be construed this way in court if a valid Caller ID is not used. A great resource on the legality of Caller ID spoofing in general can be found at the FCC.

Outside of the United States, laws vary widely by country and region, if in doubt contact a legal expert.