Letter: Don't hang up. This is a public information call...

Letter: Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why I am contacted three or four times a week by an unidentified disembodied voice claiming to be "a government backed scheme" and a "a public information call" telling me of an assortment of "legal" findings related to credit card companies being "forced" to pay back large amounts of "overcharging".

Since this "voice" then instructs me to "speak to a friendly advisor" in order to ascertain my eligibility for such a payout I can only assume that this is another example of the wonders of high tech efficiency in a scrambled artificial intelligence application.

It's certainly not natural intelligence, for who in their right mind, quite apart from all the security advice regarding not giving out banking details, is going to enter into conversation with said unidentified disembodied voice when quite obviously it is going to ask details of any account I might have in order to ascertain my eligibility for a payout or be "removed from our database"?

That's if the call is even legitimate.

It's certainly not exclusive to credit card findings, but in purporting to be "government backed" it is significantly undermining the confidence in government to administer good governance.

It undermines my confidence in methods of maintaining security on a domestic phone line and what is in the national interest regarding matters of devolving security.

Since it is a feature of most forms of electronic communications I suspect it might be difficult to prevent except by informing the public of exactly how such a "government backed scheme" would normally provide public information or be accessed for complaint.

I have now transferred my "government backed public information" caller to the pages of your newspaper as an act of voluntary service and to solve the problem.

Name and address supplied