From August 11, a new law will prohibit cold calling without your prior consent. However, your peace of mind is far from guaranteed: here are the legal tricks that professionals are already preparing to use to continue to contact you.
5, 10 or even 15 times a day: for many of us, cold calling has become a real ordeal. You may use clever techniques by deleting your telephone number from the lists to filter these unwanted calls or force the operators to hang up on their own… nothing helps, the calls continue to rain in trying to sell you solar panels, a new electricity contract or even profitable investments.
But good news, from August 11, 2026, untimely and unsolicited telephone canvassing will be prohibited by law. From this date, “the explicit consent of consumers will now be required for all telephone canvassing”as stipulated on the public service website. “Only companies with a clear, unambiguous, specific and revocable opt-in will be able to contact a consumer for commercial purposes.” Clearly, as long as you have not given the green light to a company to receive phone calls, they will not have the right to contact you to sell you any product. But contrary to what one might think, this does not mean that we will no longer receive any calls. Because teleoperators have more than one trick up their sleeve.
First, companies do not need authorization to contact their own customers, and thus offer other additional products or services. Clearly, you can always be approached by companies with which you already have a contract. Moreover, some are now turning to the “commercial bounce” method: customer service operators take advantage of calls received to try to secure new sales. As it was you who called, no need for consent because it is not legally a solicitation.
But to prospect new customers, companies have several methods to obtain consent. As the magazine explains What to Choose Togetherteleoperators will be able to ask consumers to leave their contact details in order to be called back if an offer interests them. Others may also “condition participation in a competition or the downloading of free content (a catalog, a white paper, a 3D creation tool, etc.) to authorization to be contacted by a sales representative”. This could also be done by simply checking a box in an online form, or when making a purchase in a store for example. The main thing is that the professional can prove that he has received authorization from the consumer.
Furthermore, from August 11, the Bloctel service set up by the government will no longer be available. Uncontrolled canvassing is now prohibited, so it will no longer be necessary to register to oppose commercial calls. To keep your phone calm after this summer, be extra vigilant during your future online purchases or registrations, and track down the famous authorization box in the small lines. On the other hand, “if you object to the continuation of a communication, the professional must immediately end the call and no longer contact you”specifies the new regulations. In the event of abusive calls that continue despite everything, you can report them on the signal.conso.gouv.fr platform, which will lead to possible sanctions for the professionals concerned.
