The government wants to help consumers stop the barrage of unwanted calls, including phone solicitations for extra services offered by credit card issuers. The Federal Trade Commission has proposed to establish a national "Do Not Call" registry which will make it illegal for telemarketers to call consumers who place their phone number on the national registry. The registry would enable consumers to eliminate most telemarketing calls simply by making one call to the FTC. The government is also seeking to prohibit such practices as blocking or subverting the transmission of the name and/or telephone number of the calling party for caller identification service purposes. The FTC wants to ban the use of predictive dialers that place a call but do not respond immediately to an answered call, resulting in "dead air". The FTC also proposes to expand its telemarketing rules to cover calls made to solicit charitable contributions. For more information visit: http://www.ftc.gov.