A: The provision of Do-not-call Registers is an important measure in the UEMO to protect the public from receiving unsolicited commercial electronic messages sent to their telephone or fax numbers. The Do-not-call Registers aim to strike a balance between the interests of recipients and senders of commercial electronic messages. The Do-not-call Registers will be made available to senders of commercial electronic messages for them to ascertain whether the user of a telephone or fax number does not wish to receive unsolicited commercial electronic message at that telephone or fax number. By registering his telephone / fax number to a Do-not-call Register, the user in effect has opted out from receiving further commercial electronic messages at this telephone / fax number from all senders. Similar registers have been set up by the USA, UK, Australia and India governments.

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A: Under the UEMO, the Telecommunications Authority ("the TA") is empowered to establish Do-not-call Registers in Hong Kong. The Office of the Telecommunications Authority ("OFTA") is the government department responsible to administer the day-to-day operations of Do-not-call Registers.

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A: You do not need to pay any fee for registering your numbers on Do-not-call Registers.

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A: OFTA has established three registers, namely, a Do-not-call Register for fax (the Fax Register), a Do-not-call Register for short messages (the Short Messages Register) and a Do-not-call Register for pre-recorded telephone messages (the Pre-recorded Register). The Short Messages Register generally covers SMSs and MMSs sent over mobile network as well as short messages sent over fixed network. The Pre-recorded Register generally covers pre-recorded voice and video calls.

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A: By registering your number in a Do-not-call Register, you are protected by the UEMO in that all senders of commercial electronic messages are not allowed to send any further commercial electronic messages to your registered number from the 10th working day after your number is listed in the Do-not-call Register unless you have given your consent to this sender to send you such messages. Any further commercial electronic messages sent to your registered number starting from the protection commencement date without your consent is a breach of the UEMO and the TA will consider taking appropriate enforcement actions against the concerned senders. For more information on protection commencement date, please see Question 1.7.

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A: Regardless of the time of registering your number on the Do-not-call Register and the time of giving your consent to an individual sender, a valid consent always overrides the registration on the Do-not-call Register. For example, if recipient A gives consent to sender B for sending commercial electronic messages, even if recipient A subsequently registers his telephone number on the Do-not-call Register, sender B is still allowed to send recipient A commercial electronic messages until recipient A withdraws his consent.

If you have given your consent to a sender but later on you wish to stop receiving further commercial electronic messages from this sender, you may make an unsubscribe request to this sender. In other words, an unsubscribe request should be treated as a withdrawal of consent, as well as an indication that no further commercial electronic messages should be sent to the concerned electronic address. If a sender receives both a consent and an unsubscribe request from a recipient, the latest one would prevail.

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A: The protection commencement dates for numbers registered on the Do-not-call Registers will be the 10th working day from the registration date.  The registration date can be checked at the web site www.dnc.gov.hk.

After the protection commencement date, you can expect not to receive any more unsolicited commercial electronic messages at your registered number.Having said that, you will still receive commercial electronic messages from senders to whom you have given consent, even if the consent was given before you register your number on the Do-not-call Register. You have to withdraw the consent from these individual senders to whom you have given your consent in order to stop them from sending further commercial electronic messages to you.

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A: Working day means any day other than a public holiday (including Sundays but not Saturdays) or a black rainstorm warning day or gale warning day.

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A: There is no expiry date for numbers registered in Do-not-call Registers. If in the future you wish to remove your number from the Do-not-call Registers, you will have to cancel the registration of your number. To do this, you can call the Do-not-call Register hotline from the number that you wish to cancel the registration and you should enable calling number display. Then, please select "to cancel a registered number" in the voice menu.

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A: The information in Do-not-call Registers released to senders will only contain the registered numbers and their respective registration dates.

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A: The Do-not-call Registers system deployed for registration is an Interactive Voice Response system. You must call the Do-not-call Register hotline from the telephone number or fax number that you wish to register and enable outgoing calling number display. The system will capture your number and prompt you to press a key to confirm the registration of the calling number. After the registration process, your number will be listed in the Do-not-call Register before the end of the day.

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A: There will not be any deadline for registration. You can register your number(s) onto the Do-not-call Registers on any day.

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A: You can dial "1357" before calling the registration hotline when you register.

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A: Before you make the call to the registration hotline, you need to dial "1357" first to re-enable the outgoing calling number display.

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A: Personal numbers are mainly used by customers for call forwarding to their preferred destinations, which might be a fixed line number, a mobile number or a voice mailbox. So the user would not be able to "call" from such prefix 8 personal numbers and the Do-not-call Register would not be able to capture the calling number and complete the registration.

As a result, special arrangement will be made for registration of prefix 8 personal numbers in the Fax Register, the Short Messages Register and the Pre-recorded Register.Please use any phone to call the registration hotline and choose "Register Another Number" and input the prefix 8 personal number that you would like to register. Then, a call will be placed back to the number to be registered, asking the user to confirm the number registration. Before the registration, you should call-forward your personal number to a telephone number or a fax number which you can answer/access.

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A: If our system cannot capture a valid calling number display of your call, our system will ask you to input the 8-digit telephone number you wish to register and tell you that it will call back within a specified time period. In a moment, the system will call you back at the inputted 8-digit telephone number and prompt you to confirm your request for the registration of that telephone number. Please note that this call-back arrangement is available for registration of prefixes 2, 3 and 8 numbers. There will be no call-back arrangement for prefixes 6 and 9 mobile numbers as these numbers, in general, should be able to show the correct outgoing calling number display There are rare situations in which prefixes 6 and 9 numbers cannot show the correct outgoing calling number display, and special arrangement will be provided for registration of such number (please see Question 4.8). For call-back or fax-back arrangement of the Fax Register, please see Questions 3.3, 3.4 and 3.6.

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A: If you are not able to receive the returned call in the call-back arrangement, the system will retry after around 15 minutes. In general, the system will attempt to call you back up to 3 times before recording the registration as failed. If you cannot answer any of these calls, you would have to call the registration hotline again and repeat the registration process.

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A: In the Fax Register, our system has implemented a feature of fax-back arrangement to address the problem encountered by fax mailboxes. You can use any phone to call the registration hotline of the Fax Register, choose to input the 8-digit fax number you wish to register, select the option of call back by fax and then hang up. In a moment, our system will send a fax page containing an authentication code to the inputted number. Please use any phone to call 1835005 and follow the voice prompt to enter the authentication code in order to complete the registration process.

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A: In the Fax Register, our system has implemented a feature of fax-back arrangement to address the problem encountered by fax machines without a handset. You can use any phone to call the registration hotline of the Fax Register, choose to input the 8-digit fax number you wish to register, select the option of call back by fax and then hang up. In a moment, our system will send a fax page containing an authentication code to the inputted number. Please use any phone to call 1835005 and follow the voice prompt to enter the authentication code in order to complete the registration process.

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A: In a fax-back arrangement, if the fax page containing the authentication code is not received because your fax line is busy, the system will try to send you the fax page again after around 15 minutes. Nevertheless, if you did not receive or lost the fax page, you would not be able to enter the authentication code into the system and registration of the number will not be successful. In order to register the number, you will need to call the registration hotline again and repeat the registration process.

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A: Yes. Both fixed and mobile numbers can be registered in the Fax Register. Please use the phone of the telephone number that you wish to register to call the registration hotline of the Fax Register. Please enable outgoing calling number display before calling the registration hotline. If you have previously disabled the calling number display, please dial "1357" before the registration hotline number when you make a call for number registration, or re-enable outgoing calling number display before calling the registration hotline. If your fixed phone cannot display the correct outgoing calling number display, please choose to input the 8-digit number you wish to register and select the option of call back by voice and then hang up. A call will be made to the inputted number and ask you to confirm the number registration.

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A: You can check the registration status of your number by calling the registration hotline of Do-not-call Registers from the number you want to check. Alternatively, you may check the registration status through the web site www.dnc.gov.hk.

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A: You must call the registration hotline from the number that you wish to cancel the registration and you should enable calling number display. You will have to select the "to cancel a registered number" in the voice menu. For prefix-2 and -3 fixed line / fax numbers or prefix-8 personal numbers that do not support correct calling number display, the feature of call-back arrangement is provided. Once your number is cancelled in a Do-not-call Register, it will be removed from the Do-not-call Register by the end of the day.

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A: For numbers that have been ported between operators, there is no need to re-register because there has been no change of ownership of registered user.

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A: There is no need for you to cancel the registration. OFTA will obtain lists of terminated numbers from network operators on a regular basis so as to maintain the validity of numbers contained in Do-not-call Registers. If you have terminated the service of your telephone number (which has been registered on the Do-not-call Registers) and are later reassigned with the same number again, you would have to do the registration on that number again by calling the registration hotline if you would like the protection on your number to continue.

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A: Senders are required to provide unsubscribe facility in every commercial electronic message they send out. Even if your number is not registered in any Do-not-call Registers, you can ask senders to stop calling or sending messages to your number again by making unsubscribe requests to them. However, it should be noted that person-to-person interactive communications are exempted from the UEMO.

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A: Yes. Pre-paid SIM mobile numbers can be registered on any of the Do-not-call Registers.

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A: Section 58(2) of the UEMO provides that any information obtained from the Do-not-call Registers should not be used for purposes other than those specified in section 31(2)(b), i.e. for registered users of electronic address to notify senders not to send further commercial electronic messages, and for senders to honour such requests. Misuse of Do-not-call Registers is an offence liable to a fine up to HK$1,000,000 and imprisonment of up to 5 years.

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A: In such situation, you would need to fill in an application form and send to OFTA with a recent telephone bill (or other document) which shows that you are the registered user of the telephone/fax number that you would like to register. The application form  can be downloaded here.

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A: In order to protect the general public, there is a need to verify that the person registering a telephone/fax number is the registered user of the number, or someone doing it on his/her behalf. If registration to the Do-not-call Registers is made by calling the hotline, verification can be done by either capturing the calling number display of the caller, or making a call-back or fax-back to the number to be registered. On the other hand, online registration cannot allow verification to be done in an efficient manner.

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