First Orion Announces 100,000 Complaints Filed with the FTC

CONWAY, Ark., Feb. 9, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- First Orion, makers of the popular PrivacyStar application for Android and BlackBerry smartphones, today announced that PrivacyStar subscribers have filed over 100,000 complaints with the Federal Trade Commission. PrivacyStar includes many productivity tools, including allowing individuals to block all unwanted callers and also report potential Do Not Call Registry and Fair Debt Collection Practices Act violations direct from their smartphone, making complaint filing easy, accurate and accessible. In addition to the ability to report telemarketing and debt collection violations, PrivacyStar's suite of features also includes call and text blocking, Caller ID, Do Not Disturb and more.

"With an estimated 150 million telemarketing calls being made daily in the United States and of those, as many as 20% may be Do Not Call violations, we knew there was a growing need for the PrivacyStar reporting function, but did not expect it to take off as it has," said Jeff Stalnaker, CEO of First Orion. "We are now averaging over 10,000 complaints filed per month and the response from customers has been amazing."

PrivacyStar expanded its reporting function to include debt collectors at the request of customers and after working with the Federal Trade Commission. PrivacyStar complaint data is automatically generated by users and fed directly into Consumer Sentinel, the secure database available to more than 1,800 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and abroad for consumer protection purposes. Based on PrivacyStar statistics, 35% of all complaints filed are related to debt collection practices while about 25% relate to telemarketers.

In addition to the reporting features, PrivacyStar offers the following capabilities focused on allowing users to take control of their smartphone:

• Call Blocking – Block individual numbers, entire area codes, all private or unknown numbers and wildcard characters
• SMS Text Message Blocking – Block SMS text messages
• Caller ID – While the phone is ringing, PrivacyStar displays the name of the calling party
• Caller Lookup – Identify unknown callers by name and take appropriate action, such as adding to the contacts list or Privacy List
• SmartBlock – Employs crowdsourced data from PrivacyStar users to automatically block the most blocked numbers as determined by the entire user population
• Do Not Disturb – Forwards all non blocked incoming calls to voicemail and sends a custom text message acknowledging the call


Pricing and Availability

PrivacyStar for Android and BlackBerry smartphones is available for a no risk, free 7-day trial period. For continued service, PrivacyStar is available for $2.99 (USD) per month or for discounted semi-annual and annual periods. Consumers can easily add PrivacyStar to their monthly mobile phone bill from most of the major mobile phone providers. PrivacyStar is available at BlackBerry App World, Android Market and http://www.privacystar.com.  

About First Orion

First Orion delivers the only network-based privacy and preference service to wireline, wireless, VoIP users and smartphones. First Orion has patented numerous privacy and preference solutions and is based in Conway, Arkansas. The company provides consumers the best in phone privacy solutions.

First Orion and PrivacyStar are registered trademarks of First Orion, Corp. All registered or unregistered trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners.

SOURCE First Orion