Telemarketers have ruined the phone network for me. I haven't answered an unknown call for the past 10 years, which sometimes means I miss important ones. 99.9% of all calls are an attempt to get money, and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage.
A ban is the right idea but I wonder how they can handle it, logistically. I think there needs to be a technical solution.
A national "whitelist", where hospitals, doctors, utility companies and such can register to get their numbers whitelisted perhaps, combined with a setting on phones that block any non-whitelist number.
Each country could maintain their own whitelists, and corrupt nations selling whitelist status to scammers would get blocked in any other country at least.
I never understood what are the technical obstacles to building the phone network in such a way that caller numbers can not be spoofed or suppressed. Then, you could just build a system where receiving an unsolicited phone call from a commercial entity entitles you to a compensation in small claims court, to the tune of 50 EUR, unless the caller can prove that you explicitly authorised them.
The problem is that it's a network. The hard part of networking isn't the technology - it's the other people. And short of a government regulation or a monopoly, they'll never all agree.
STIR/SHAKEN has an exception for calls passing through TDM trunks, which don't support it. This created a small industry for passing spam calls through TDM trunks. Such calls can trivially have their caller ID spoofed.
Historically, in a world of analogue phone lines, spoofed phone numbers were a legitimate feature: if my business has more than one phone line, each of those lines is going to have its own distinct number; but I'm going to want outgoing calls from any of those lines to appear to originate from the same number (the one that I put on my promotional material, invoices, etc.).
Much the same as e-mail, identity within the phone system was, historically, entirely built on trust (because only Ma Bell could make configuration changes, and they could verify that what their customer was asking them to do was legit). Those assumptions were carried through deregulation, and are very deeply entrenched in the technical design of the network. Changing them will hopefully become easier over the next few years as analogue service is turned off entirely (e.g., BT/OR in the UK are set to turn off all analogue phone service by the end of January 2027).
The only limitation is cold hard cash. The phone companies make big bucks from telemarketers by providing an endless list of new numbers and multiple lines. The whole racket wouldn't work without the companies' greenlight.
In Spain we have something called "Lista Robinson" (in Sweden exists something similar, called "NIX-registret") which are basically opt-in lists where you can enter your phone number, then once the new lists been distributed, the telemarketing companies cannot call you, if they're doing things properly. If they call anyway, you just mention you're on the list, they hang up, and remove your number from the list they have, eventually you stop getting calls.
I think in both countries these methods are supported by actual laws, one via "advertising-exclusion systems" that the companies need to respect, and in Sweden via the Swedish Marketing Act which forces companies to not call people who've "clearly objected to that method" or something similar. I'm sure similar laws and lists exists in other countries too. Obviously hospitals, doctors, utility companies and similar don't cross-reference against these lists, as they have actual relationship with you already.
Both in Sweden and in Spain I used to receive a lot of spam calls, like multiple per week, and once enrolled on these lists, the calls are non-existent, the only telemarketing calls I get now are from the companies I already have relationships with, which happens maybe once a month.
If you suffer greatly by the constant spam calls, like I did once before, do take a look and see if there are similar opt-out lists in your country :) They may take a month or two before actually eliminating all calls, but they do work, apparently.
We have a similar list in America [1] and Canada [2]. Unfortunately, like any regulation, its efficacy is only as good as its enforcement, so my understanding is they're both routinely ignored. Particularly grim for the Canadian case -
> In January 2009, numerous media and consumer advocacy organizations reported that anyone can use false information pretending to be a telemarketer and download a set of numbers from the list for a $50 fee. It took their reporter ten minutes to do so. It has been proposed that list may be being downloaded and used as a telemarketing list overseas, where there's little that can be done as the CRTC has no jurisdiction outside of Canada
From what I can tell, many/most of my “telemarketing” calls are really scams.
And the rest are political calls, which are exempt. This the most annoying, come election time, I get 5-6 texts or calls per day asking for money or votes.
Same in Norway. I have been on the list for decades, and I never receive any unwanted calls – except from my mother (j.k love you mum!)
I am not sure why it works so well here. I have vague recollections of news articles about it being ignored in the past. I guess they just struck down hard on those. Also, I imagine if you put yourself on that list you would be really grumpy if someone called to try to sell you something.
I'm guessing (since Norway and Sweden tends to be more similar than different) that Norway also have something similar to the Swedish "Marknadsföringslagen" ("The Marketing Act") that effectively outlaws companies from calling people who obviously don't want to be called. They quite literally get fines if they call people on these lists, hence the companies actively cross-reference against them.
I've worked in cold-calling telemarketing in both Sweden and Spain in my previous life, both companies I worked for were deadly afraid of accidentally calling people on these lists, and actively instructed employees to basically say "Sorry", hang up and flag the number if someone mentioned the name of the lists.
It was the case in France too, it was called Bloctel; you just had to register your phone number and telemarketing companies had a legal obligation to look it up and not call you.
So it worked for a time, legit companies stoped calling; however most people didn't knew about Bloctel as it was little advertised.
Meanwhile, spam calls turned into scam calls, and a real issue especially with the elderly.
So I think that banning all unsolicited calling kills two birds with one stone, spam becomes illegal and scams as a consequence becomes easier to spot as there are no more unsolicited calls.
> Most countries have these no call lists but they are fairly useless as there is no enforcement
What country are you in that it doesn't work in? I know for a fact it works in Spain and Sweden, but it'll really depend on the country. You'd help by others by being a bit more explicit :)
> I've even heard stories of some scammers exclusively using such lists, as they are pre-verified!
That does suck and seems counter-productive indeed! Even more curious what exact country you're talking about now.
Dude, what country? In Spain or Sweden, I literally don't receive any calls from unknowns anymore, scammers nor telemarketing. Please specify the country so we can know what country you're talking about, and what the name of the list you enrolled in is.
Worth knowing for people who might not know; large telemarketing companies have campaigns on the internet to spread FUD about the effectiveness of these lists, so less people enroll. I'm not claiming that you is one of these, but unless we're being clear what lists/countries we're talking about here, it's borderline FUD rather than helpful to the conversation.
That just sounds like you don't actually have a "do not call" list, you have something that is trying to be a "do not call" list ;)
Speak with your local politicians to fix the issues that bothers you. They don't listen, out on the streets and protest. Same way civilians communicate with their governments in every other democracy :)
Can't remember right now if it's a EU or a Spain thing, but here they made mandatory to use real numbers on the Caller ID, so you can't use fake or hidden numbers for telemarketing. That way, of you're abusing, your line can easily be tracked, blocked or fined.
There has been some waves of spammer calls, more like "fake job offer calls" or things like that, coming from cell phone numbers, and there's still some telemarketing, but it is way way lower than, say, ten years ago. Orders of magnitude .
I wonder how much we even need international calls from unknown numbers.
In my life I have literally never legitimately had a call from an unknown number outside of the country. I guess it could be different if you have many connections or business deals internationally. But I feel like the average person could restrict inbound international calls to contacts only and be better off for it.
In the EU its not uncommon to receive phone calls from other countries. Just the other day I received a large package and the driver called with an international number to make sure I would be home to receive it.
Delivery companies would adapt and drivers would have work-only dumb phones with correct country SIMs. Problem is, spam & scam callers would adapt as well.
> In my life I have literally never legitimately had a call from an unknown number outside of the country. I guess it could be different if you have many connections or business deals internationally.
There are a ton of us who are from one country, but moved to another, maybe more in EU than other places (not sure), but I really wouldn't say it's uncommon or even out of the ordinary. And I think most of us in this situation, have received/made international calls at least once in our life.
I think its way different in the EU vs the USA. In the United States, the number of people with passports HAS dramatically increased in the past 30 years, going from ~5% to a little more than 50%; but we mainly use them for traveling once or twice / getting into bars when you’re a 22yo with a misplaced driver’s license.
More relevant to the topic at hand, it’s extremely rare to receive an unsolicited call to an American phone number from a number outside the +1 country code. So I’m sure when an immigrant in the US gets an unknown call from their home country code, they can be pretty sure the call’s intentional and worth answering
> it’s extremely rare to receive an unsolicited call to an American phone number from a number outside the +1 country code.
Can't be THAT rare, can it? Isn't 15% of the current population in the US immigrants? Most of us immigrants do receive and make calls to our "mother country" every once in a while, even introverts like me. Or maybe you were excluding immigrants in that as you mention immigrants later?
I hardly ever get international spam calls. Nowadays they seem to mostly come from domestic (Dutch) numbers in the range reserved for mobile phones. When answering the line is silent for two or three seconds (a lot of internet round-trips to somewhere in Asia, I imagine) before hearing call center background noises and a heavily accented English voice saying Hello and trying to pronounce my name. At which point I hang up, so I have no idea what comes after that. :-)
I dont think unknown numbers should be allowed at all, esp for business. I think its a reasonable requirement that if a business wants to call someone they are willing to identify them self.
Yeah, Spain went this route. We used to get telemarketing calls from random mobile phone numbers (or straight up "hidden" number), so was hard to really know where they came from, unless the person admitted it in the phone call. A year or so that was made illegal, and now every "unwanted telemarketing" call has to come from a landline with a regional code, or the toll-free numbers, which leads to them actually having to register first, so easier to crack down on the ones that don't follow the "anti-spam" lists like Lista Robinson and similar, or break the rules in other ways.
There's multiple scenarios where this has occurred to me:
1. when travelling, hotels or car rentals may need to call or update me with some information
2. friend/family member was abroad and had issues with its own phone
3. some service I was paying for had customer care in a different country
4. buying something from a seller abroad, especially in the nicher categories (like a custom made standing desk) required the seller to call me a bunch of times
There doesn't need to be any kind of technical solution. If a telemarketer wants to sell something, they must declare the name of their company. The company name can be reported to police (or whatever authorities are going to handle this) who can then fine the telemarketers.
And if they don't declare the name of the company? There are a lot of shady people out there. Plenty of them will happily call and give a fake name, or just something vague that sounds important, like, "This is Rachel from cardholder services".
So it turns out we really do need a technical solution, which is unforgeable and easily traceable access to the telephone network. Plus robust enforcement of consumer laws, something wildly out of fashion in the US.
>The company name can be reported to police (or whatever authorities are going to handle this) who can then fine the telemarketers.
This kind of happens today, but I think the problem is too big. You'll need to employ thousands to process all the complaints and by the time you issue a fine, the company has closed and a new one has started.
Anti-spam measures work by increasing cost and friction for spammers, not by stopping them completely. A burner LLC costs more than a burner SIM card, so it's a step in the right direction.
In some countries, it is illegal to make unsolicited calls to a number that is on an official "do not call" list.
Any number on that list is effectively a honeypot. I guess you could even distribute an app that automates the whole process: put your number on the list, log incoming calls, aggregate the data and report them in batches large enough to catch the government's attention.
Same for online ads. Ads should take you to a landing page saying Google served it for ShadyGambling Inc, Enemystan/Enemypur and clicking further will take you to Play Store.
I assume ownership of the caller's number can be logged/checked.
I haven't had too much trouble with telemarketers lately but there is a crowdsourced app in France called Saracroche that can be easily installed on your phone and blocks spam numbers by becoming the caller id service. You can also use the app to report a number and help build the huge database.
> I assume ownership of the caller's number can be logged/checked.
Alas, last time I checked numbers were something that was announced in-band, so it could be trivially faked by the caller. But I'm not sure if that's still true.
Not in the domain at all but wasn't this the purpose of STIR/SHAKEN but the biggest blocker was that large telcos hadn't deployed it? I think Android and iOS dialer app show you whether there was Caller ID Verification done or not so you may be able to drop anything unverified.
In France, thanks to STIR/SHAKEN, this is not possible any more for the fixed phone numbering plans (and telemarketers have to register their phone numbers in a subset of this numbering plan). For mobile lines, this is still not 100% implemented due to the difficulty of handling roaming, but I think it is becoming efficient as I didn't have a telemarketer with a mobile number since a long time (they seem to hide their number now).
Alas, last time I checked numbers were something that was announced in-band, so it could be trivially faked by the caller. But I'm not sure if that's still true.
That's where we can actually use technical solutions though: businesses shouldn't be able to place calls without cryptographically signing their origination with a key derived from their business registration.
Phone calls are essentially end to end voip these days so we have the ability to deliver that metadata.
Most EU countries implemented registration of every mobile number with personal details and national id number. Yet in the same countries there exist entire office buildings with tens of people receiving salaries for spam/scam/cold calling, and they are fully anonymous?!
When I was getting a D&B number I missed their call I wasn't expecting because I wont answer unknowns and my phone blocks half the calls they think are spam anyway, then had to spend the better half of a week answering spam calls before finally getting what I needed.
I feel this could be solved by crowdsourcing, assuming the support from the major phone manufacturers and possibly governments.
- After a call from an unknown number concludes, the phone could offer an option to the user to mark it as "spam" (blocking the number in the history would have the same effect).
- The spam mark would then go into the central database. If a phone number was marked as "spam" too many times, it would no longer be able to ring the phone (maybe it gets diverted into the "spam folder", like e-mails).
Or am I being too naive here? What are the obstacles for something like this actually happening?
My google android phone already does this. I get basically no spam calls at all except very rarely. But I go to the spam tab in the phone app and I see there are dozens that got blocked
You cannot trust which number which is signalled to the end user.
Most spam calls I get is shown as legit numbers. If I call them back they will go to an innocent and unsuspecting user.
Google is already collecting this information and shows numbers as "probably spam". It is hard to enforce this harder even with collateral damage as you cannot trust the number which is signalled.
Legislation is in this case a good thing which might get the telcos to take this more seriously. This needs to be handled on an operator level. Nothing will happen without legislative incentives.
The world is run on SS7 which has a lot of problems which inertia and lacking incentives makes hard to overcome.
The whitelist managed by the government is not a bad idea.
I’ve been thinking how to turn the table so that you could allow only certain parties to reach you if you allowed them to (say you are waiting for a call from the auto repair shop).
I like the idea of a whitelist. But there needs to be a way for you to also manage that white list so that you can allow that repair shop to call you in the next few weeks.
Have you tried call screening? I know for sure apple phones can do this but I believe some android phones can too?
For me, all unknown calls are screened. Which means if someone who’s not in my contacts calls me, they get some automatic voice saying something like “this is apple screen calling, please let me know who you are and why you are calling”
The person calling then either hangs up or says something, if they say something I can see the live transcription and answer the call immediately if it’s important.
It’s been incredibly effective. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now with no complaints from anyone for not being able to reach me, and not once have I answered a scam call during that period.
I’ve had a few situations similar to what you describe, some service I’m using like a doctor, realestate agent etc called me and I immediately recognised who they are and why they are calling and answered.
There we go again, technical solutions that doesn't actually solve the problem, yet works for the individual with the right technology :)
Jokes aside, besides just outlawing telemarketing as a whole, there are "bigger" solutions that can help more, like the opt-in "do not call" registries that bunch of countries have, that actually work, and works across landline/mobile phones, regardless of OS or manufacturer :) I'm not sure those lists exists in every country, but every country I've lived in (so far) has had a variant of those, that works.
Marketing ruins everything it touches, from the public square to the internet and from the phone network to radio. I don’t know what the alternative is, but I don’t need one to see this is shit.
These would all help: well funded public broadcasting (for TV & radio); strongly enforced regulations for public advertising (public square); encouragement of open source & open standards; real anti-trust enforcement.
Most of the above exists - the problem is political & regulatory capture constantly undermines and weakens a lot of it.
At least a strategy to ignore unknown international numbers has much less collateral damage if any.
All emergencies from unknown numbers that I can thank of will be from local numbers.
I personally answer all phone calls but I have very little of those spam calls (on average once a month perhaps?) And I have learned to just rudely stop the call without saying "sorry, I'm not interested".
Lista Robinson works great in Spain though, enroll there and enjoy the silence :) May take a month or two to really kick in, and if you've already enrolled but it's not working, check that the details are 100% correct. Worked both for me, my wife and tons of friends, although it takes time before it works.
Just easy ability to report would be enough. Then the govt can get to the phone number owner and make any middle men also responsible (in "tell us who was your client or pay the fine" way)
At the other side of the spectrum (they are mostly annoying, I agree) how do you keep promoting or selling your product if yiu cannot find your customers?
As a consumer, I don’t want you to find me. I’ll find you when I need you.
There are places that list businesses, like the yellow pages of old, or place ads in publications that are relevant to the services or products you offer.
If you sell tires, and I don’t need tires, I don’t want to hear or see anything about tires.
Advertising is such a zero sum game as well. The only reason companies have to cold call market is because their competitors are cold calling. So you have to participate to keep up. If no one can do it, no one is getting a leg up over the rest.
You’re making a lot of assumptions. What is the cost benefit for cold calling? You could conceivably be better off letting the competition bleed. But I suspect a legit cost benefit analysis is hard to come by, mostly because marketing sells itself to management first.
My pet peeve is that a full class A attestation is still not a requirement in 2026. The US FCC won't do it. I have no hope from the current administration. However, perhaps France is in a unique position to implement this. The idea is that all calls that have a domestic caller ID will be required to have full class A attestation and all carriers will be required by law to block any calls that do not have such full attestation. Any carrier that attests phone numbers that it is not supposed to should get huge fines and criminal charges. This is my dream for what all Telecoms in the world should do, hopefully beginning with France. This requires broad support within the country and a firm deadline so companies don't shrug it off until the last moment and then demand an extension.
Me too. The problem is now I trust Meta with much of this instead of the FCC which is awkward for me. I use on Messenger and Whatsapp much more often for voice calls, and you know exactly who is calling.
Norway has the same law. I get no spam calls like this from Norway.
What I do get is spam calls from abroad. Often with a spoofed Norwegian number. Why can't operators block this? I know call centers and various things need to "spoof" a number they own, and when I myself call from abroad my Norwegian number will come from outside Norway.
But why can't they attest the numbers somehow? Owner of +47 XXXXXXX is currently not abroad. So why allow someone from the other side of the world to call me pretending to come from that number? Why does the Norwegian operators allow that?
We have a ban on telemarketing calls regarding insurance in Switzerland. But we still get them.
So what happens is that insurance agents (which are required to be licensed) don't call them selves. Instead they use 3rd party call centers outside the country which make the calls. They "warmup" the clients to get a meeting in which the agent then in a visit can make the sale.
For law enforcement to punish these people and revoke their licenses they would need to do costly sting operation which they can only do so much.
As someone else pointed out, it's not about the scammers. The scammers could however be hampered if the phone system was safer.
There's no reason why the phone system should allow my number to be spoofed, but that's what happens. There might be some companies that benefit from having all outgoing calls shows coming from some main number, but in that case a solution where a set of numbers are allowed to pretend so be some other number could be implemented. The majority of scams I've encountered and have heard about involves someone calling you from a random number, belonging to someone that's not involved, but who are just having their number misused. I assume this is to avoid getting blocked or looking legitimate if the target looks up the number.
Exactly, I think all these regulations in the Europe fail to understand the enforceability of these, any legitimate business won't be making unsolicited calls already. For instance, I weekly get unsolicited calls from a legit recruitment agency in the UK, never ever shared my data with them, they don't even email but directly call in absurd times. I requested removal of my data after months of ignored calls but they kept calling still, reported to ICO but no luck either.
I'm 30+ and was trying to buy some wine yesterday, and was IDed and i'm clearly well over 18 yet they had to take the bottle back as I didn't carry my ID with me. Essentially the same thing with pubs/bars etc, you're clearly over 18 but there is a weird power trip yet in some raves/clubs you still see under 18s being let in.
This law is especially targeted at legit businesses... It's already illegal for scammers to call.
And I don't think something being hard to enforce is reason enough to not do anything about it. If we truly care about something, we can always find a way.
The main problem and challenge with all these regulations is enforcement. How are they actually going to enforce them?
The U.S. already has very strict rules against unsolicited calls, yet I still get around 20 spam calls a day saying things like "press 2 to be connected" or offering some "$64K loan."
At the same time, I have not received a single unsolicited call from a reputable company.
The same is true for text messages. In 2023, the U.S. introduced stricter regulations, and companies like Twilio responded with very strict anti-spam rules. The rules are now so restrictive that we are forced to stopped using Twilio for text important notification to our my own team.
Yet I still receive dozens of spam text messages every week.
So the question is whether the regulations can actually be enforced against the people who are already ignoring them.
In Brazil no one uses common phone lines anymore because, in part, of the telemarketers and scams calls. Most people I know enable “silence unknown callers” and use almost exclusively Whatsapp for communication.
The government tried to control this with an official (no call list) that is usually ignored by companies who use third parties and disposable mobile numbers to do their dirty work.
Telcos have the power to control that but they are usually an internal mess and this is low in their priority list as they consider the voice calls a lost battleground.
This is a great move by France, but most of the rest of the world does not suffer from the telemarketing scam hell that Americans do.
I am a US citizen living overseas. I have a US cell number that is only used for 2FA for US financial institutions. No one else has that number. I get more scam calls every day on that number than I do in a year on my local number. It's crazy.
Most of the world has solved the worst of the problem by simply not allowing caller-ID spoofing and by blocking bad actors the way that ISPs block email coming from known bad IPs.
The US already has the STIR/SHAKEN authentication protocols, but the telcos seem to feel no financial or regulatory pressure to clamp down on all the sketchy intermediate carriers the scammers use to bypass them.
Maybe it's America's love of "market-based solutions" that prevents of from solving this problem the way everyone else has?
Rather then actually solve the problem via regulation, the US prefers to turn it into business opportunities to make the situation suck slightly less by letting the telcos sell subscriptions to moderately effective blocking programs and an creating an ecosystem of moderately effective apps.
> Most of the world has solved the worst of the problem by simply not allowing caller-ID spoofing and by blocking bad actors
I live in the Netherlands, and I get several spoofed crypto-scam calls every day. I have also stopped picking up the phone for numbers I don't recognize. My own telephone number has been used to call others for a while, so I would get tons of "sorry I was busy, what did you call about?" return calls from random people when clearly I had not called them at all.
As far as I know, the only reason spoofing is even possible, is so that call centers in other countries can pretend to be calling from a local number, which.. why is that even a feature?
This feels very much like an example of "this should be run by the government" rather than letting this be run by companies.
It's not about scams, it's about commercial telemarketing calls.
Scams have been heavily hit in January when the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers (it's not an actual hard block, but unauthenticated calls will be market as "private number" which are ignored by most people already).
There will always be scammers who register an actual phone number to run their scams, but this rule will at least stop the constant phone harassment that made everyone unplug their landline phone.
> the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers
That is really great. I've had a lot of trouble with calls from spoofed numbers a couple of years ago (it ended when I installed a scam blacker on my phone), and when I looked into it at that time, my impression was that phone companies couldn't block spoofed numbers. On the other hand, if the scam blocking app can block them, there clearly must be some way to detect them.
Phone companies need to do a better job protecting their customers against this abuse.
The problem with spoofing is that there are legitimate uses of it. It's probably solvable by only allowing spoofing of numbers you actually own (so if a hospital has 20 phone lines, they can spoof their publicly posted phone number, but random spammers can't spoof your neighbour's phone number).
The fact that the phone companies haven't done this or much else yet goes to show how little they care.
> Telecommunications operators must block calls terminating from the public
international interface when the calling party number is clearly incorrect or the calling party number is a Finnish telephone number and the situation does not involve roaming as referred to in section 7.2.1.
>when the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers (it's not an actual hard block, but unauthenticated calls will be market as "private number" which are ignored by most people already).
This is good but not far enough. They should not show up as "private number" they should simply now show up at all. After some time, any networks that even allow spoofed outgoing calls should be disconnected from the phone system.
Never going to fix the inherent problem og spam calls though.
Even if all would follow the ban (witch they wont as i get frequent calls and am on a legally dont call list) thee is the inherent problem of foreign spammers also often masquerading as local numbers.
If noe positive thing the twlecompanies would het it å bit easier filtrering and the amount would be less.
"God! I only asked her to be a hooker. It's not like I wanted her to work in telesales".
I stopped picking up unsolicited unknown calls perhaps a decade ago, and nothing was lost. It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'. It would be great to have a tech solution for this, really, but I doubt printing another law is going to help with the scammier side of this market.
> It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'.
Assuming you can get access to their phone, only allowing calls from saved numbers would probably be the best solution, assuming she doesn't get random calls from hospitals and the like. If she's still using a landline though, that's a tough one to solve.
I can't just do that, she is an autonomous person, and quite willful also. Despite her age, she is not only as lucid as it gets - she still works (although from home) as an applied mathematician!
In context, me saying 'You can just do that' means 'You should do that' (barring there being good reason, which I haven't seen so far).
I hate that phrasing. It was weaponised by teachers in my youth. It's still used by some people to close doors and remove options without good reason. I'll make fun of it whenever I can.
> I disagree with you. Someone being autonomous is a good reason for not wanting to take a decision for them against their will.
Tell that to society at large. No man is an island.
It's a sensible default and should be enabled as such. They wouldn't know the difference if it already were. If they can articulate a specific and valid reason as to why they don't want it that way, then fair. It should be an option open to change. It simply being 'impolite' is somewhere between 'open to interpretation in specific cases' and 'wrong'. Many aspects of what is normally called politeness are constructs that have no or limited use in the current world. This is one of them. My conclusion is thus that their reason is invalid.
I'm making some assumptions. If any are counter to the reality of the situation, then there might be good reasons not to change it.
Edit to your edit:
> That's not very consistent. You wrote that whether they should was another question.
Emphasis is a common literary tool.
> This didn't happen here. No doors were closed without a good reason, because there is one.
Okay, that's what you probably implied in your first reply, and I think that's what's actually interesting to discuss.
I don't think not acting against someone's will is a question of mere politeness. In social care, it's often considered mistreatment to do so.
For instance if it is not considered that an adult who's not otherwise autonomous can't express consent and doesn't want to take their pills, social workers normally shouldn't (and legally can't) force them to take them, even if it's good for them.
At least where I live.
Not all act against someone's will is mistreatment, but it definitely goes beyond politeness.
> I don't think (not) acting against someone's will is a question of mere politeness. In social care, it's often considered mistreatment.
The reason given by the person in question was politeness. I'm not talking about whether or it's polite to change this setting.
> For instance if it is considered that an adult who's not autonomous can express consent and doesn't want to take their pills, social workers normally shouldn't (and legally can't) force them to take them, even if it's good for them.
That's because 'I want to die' is a valid reason. Or at least it should be. I doubt that social workers actually come to their conclusions from that framework. They probably do it like you said; simply acting against autonomy is itself bad within their framework, but this is inconsistent with society's behaviour at large.
Similarly, if GP's grandmother's reason was 'I want to receive random spam calls and calls from telemarketers' or 'I have friends overseas who might not be able to reach me', then I'd have nothing to say. Those are valid reasons. On the other hand, perceived potential impoliteness, which actually isn't, is not.
It's funny and sad to see polite people run into scammers. I witnessed to a young man being almost unable to keep saying "no" for the 20th time to an insistent seller on a beach.
When it happens to me, they're met with silence or "GTFO" after the 3rd question. I am impolite.
To me it's just sad. Scammers and pushy sellers aren't acting in good faith, but polite people seem to be unable to recognise this, or unwilling to change their modus operandi in spite of it. Like, if you know the person in front of you is a knobhead who wants nothing more than for you to part with your money in exchange for nothing, why are you even entertaining the idea of treating them with even a sliver of respect?
Add in the fact that the person on the other end isn't even a human (it's not a human spam calling you; at best it's an automated call which get dumped on a human when it connects), and the whole thing gets even more absurd.
In the last 2-3 years, my impression is that most french numbers receive daily unsolicited phone calls. In 2026 they even started sending scammy “missing delivery” text message with your real name printed on an attached MMS picture (on a parcel to deliver), making it even more real.
Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
Yup, having a French number is unbearable without automatic blacklist apps. I definitely notice it when it breaks after an iOS update, is start getting multiple calls a day. For any french here with an iPhone: Begone works great and has community lists for spam numbers.
The SMS are getting out of hand too, they send you a pre-recorded MP3 in addition to the picture too. At least they don't have enough information to know I don't have a letterbox.
> Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
Yeah, more and more French people are getting annoyed at it, esp. when companies always say "no worries no payment info leaked". I don't care, I can change my credit card but I can't change my personal informations.
And literally last week it's Bloctel that leaked! It's the government managed list of phone numbers that don't want to receive telemearketing calls, where anyone can add its own number to be excluded. Great idea on paper, goldmine of a data leak.
That's great. Netherland banned them a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I still receive them. Sometimes a lot. A year or two ago, I received calls almost every week from a major TV/internet provider (Ziggo-Vodafone; total crooks). I told them not to call me again, I complained to the regulator, but as far as I can tell, nothing was ever done about it.
So banning it is great, but you still need to enforce that law.
From the same company? That's crazy. You'd think they'd get the message, but they're really stubborn. Most Dutch companies seem to obey the rules, but this one (and it's a big one) clearly does not. I still don't understand why they weren't fined into oblivion.
In my personal experience basically all spam calls in France come from a fixed set of number prefixes. [0]
So phone companies could just offer to block those prefixes - it would be a trivial solution to the problem. But it's not an option [1], so either they make good money from those calls, or there's some other hurdle or legal issue.
Either way the new law could (in addition to making it illegal for companies to make spam calls) also simply have mandated that network operators block the known ones. Too bad.
No, that's a bad idea. There's no hurdle or legal issue, and money isn't behind it either. Those "prefixes" (area codes) are all the same segments of this or that national numbering plan that are also allocated by legitimate businesses both for placing legitimate outbound calls to their customers and for numbers that connect e.g. switchboards/IVRs to serve customers who are calling in.
I had a bit of a funny situation happen where putting myself on the do not call list stopped calls from more reputable sources but also caused an even bigger increase in sketchy calls. I switched to using a free service tied to my phone company that makes callers enter a number before being forwarded. Turns out nearly 100% of these remaining calls were automated and got dropped. Turns out sometimes you need two fences to make good neighbors.
This seems so much of a no-brainer to me due to scammy calls to elderly and pure time loss responding to calls it is interesting not much has been done about it in other countries. I guess the telemarketers have a good lobby.
I think Italy did something similar a couple of years ago.
You would need to put your number in a special register to opt-out of these calls.
I don't know if this ever worked or not, but giving your number to government feels odd to me so I never signed up. It's a lot more simple to just outright block unknown callers.
Sweden has such a system*, and a couple of related laws, since the early 2000s. In my personal experience it works very well here, and I've never heard friends or acquaintances complain either about getting unsolicited calls despite having signed up on the list. An identical system would of course not perform equally in any other country, depending on local "telephone culture" and general moralities.
We have been chided over and over and over again on HN by the fine citizens of the E.U. that unsolicited telemarketing calls are purely an American problem, are completely unheard of in Europe, and that this never happens in "civilized" nations with "a functioning legal system."
How many door to door salesman do you encounter? Where do you live, if you can share?
I haven't seen one in decades, and even then it was usually some pamphlets or books to support a cause or the other.
On the phone (Italy), OTOH, I used to get daily scam call to buy "Amazon stocks" or change utility providers or install water filters. That seems to have massively faded out due to new regulations tho.
Jehovah's Witnesses, across Europe, still even nowadays. Some other minor religious sects targeting elderly, usually offering care or attention followed by vicious takeover of real estate.
Only because you have not been profiled as lone and vulnerable, doesn't mean the practice doesn't exist:)
I'm pretty sure that would fall under freedom of religion rights, and it couldn't be banned. Especially as proselytizing is a well known and well established religious practice.
I'm personally atheistic, and thus have no religious practices whatsoever. However, just like it's legal to build churches, to ring church bells, to wear visible religious imagery, it's also legal and highly protected to talk to others, even strangers, about your religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
I know JWs go door to door but I don't think they sell anything nor do they ask for donations - all their stuff is free? To qualify as a salesman you'd have to be selling something, surely?
My local C of E cathedral sent out a mailshot during COVID asking for donations with a range from £50 - £1000 options on the card (yes, really). I've never had anything like that from JWs.
I get visits from the local air ambulance team looking for donations but I'd classify them as a charity, not a salesman. Even though the person is under contract (employed) to do the task of going door to door, it would be a charitable engagement and not a sale. I asked the last guy if he got commission - he said no.
I understand the sentiment but I don't understand why you're shouting a response at me; I was trying to highlight the difference between charities and salesmen.
I think your issue is with religion, not sales people, which is what this article is about.
Yes of course. But I was saying of the people I've had at my door, only some have been trying to sell things, which is what a "salesman" is.
The guy from the local baptist church gave me a some book about being saved by Jesus (it had instructions on how to pray I think? dunno threw it away) but he didn't ask me for any money.
By contrast, the Lithuanian girl who was trying to sell religious books (no idea who they were - some encyclopedias? it was very odd) was trying to sell them to me (nice girl, had come to this country and was living in a dorm? was confused why UK taps had hot/cold separately instead of a combined tap). The guys scamming me about a roof repair were definitely not doing it free. Nor were the guys trying to get me to switch internet provider, nor the guy offering me window replacement and double glazing, nor the woman selling me "lucky lavender", nor the guy selling sponges and cleaning products for tiny amounts of change.
That's what I was saying - people who ask for money or donations are salesmen. People who don't, aren't.
Nuisance religious callers and general unsolicited visitors is another topic. The article is about sales calls, not general nuisances.
In the UK the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is the register for saying "I don't want unsolicited live sales or marketing calls". "Making you aware of" on behalf of a business is a marketing call, so there is no "loophole" to fix.
If the business ignores the rules, there is little that can be done legally.
UK law differentiates between businesses, charities and individuals. I do not know how it is done in other countries, but in the UK you can't pretend that a lone individual ringing you is a "marketing" call, no matter how much you dislike the other person or their topic. If it is a person ringing on behalf of a business, it's a business or marketing call, and therefore subject to TPS.
I do not know how registered charities (not businesses) relate to TPS. I haven't received a call from a charity that I can remember, but my grandma once did get a call from the RSPB whose telehandler seemed oblivious to her having suffered a stroke with speech difficulties, and subsequently arranged for a boatload of bird seed and pamphlets for her to distribute (which would be impossible!).
TPS also does not apply to individuals, which is why any individual can lawfully ring someone else, unless the calls are repeated (harassment), but again that doesn't fall under TPS.
You can become "ex-directory" to stop your number being listed, but this doesn't stop organisations just iterating phone numbers incrementally hoping to find someone.
For visitors to your door, you can put a sign up. I have. It stops all visitors. I also have a video doorbell so I can decide whether I bother answering the door.
What other kind of infantilizing laws do you purpose? Perhaps they should also make it illegal for people to interact with you if you find unpleasant? Ban small talk at checkouts?
Using the web is basically impossible without an ad blocker, and having a phone is basically impossible without a call blocker.
Spam has taken over every form of communication, but luckily there are easy ways to stop it.
I use AdGuard as ad blocker, blocks ads as a browser extension and ads on websites and apps as a mobile app. For telemarketers I use Should I Answer, it works GREAT. Never ever receive a single call from a telemarketer, they all get blocked automatically.
The only effective way to police this is to make the telco accountable and have a reporting system. Someone is terminating the calls and getting paid for doing it.
Automatic filtering on modern iOS has been a game changer here. Assume Android has something similar, but I can't speak highly enough of that one feature
I use SpamBlocker for filtering (available on F-Droid) to block calls, and with at least newish Samsung there is an option to hide blocked calls in the menu of the phone app.
I've got it configured to block on a country basis, with previous calls and contacts as a whitelist - that works for me.
Note that in France, telemarketing calls are already required to use specific number prefixes. This is already very useful: you can immediately tell whether a call is from a telemarketer just by looking at the number prefix.
> Note that in France, telemarketing calls are already required to use specific number prefixes. This is already very useful: you can immediately tell whether a call is from a telemarketer just by looking at the number prefix.
This is useful only for the few who care enough to operate legally. I activated a white list mode that prevents any call from a number that isn't in my current phone book because there's a constant flood of calls from regular mobile numbers (prefixed 06), most likely from spoofing. The phone network is unbearable in France without a white list mode.
Actually, people that installed the open-source Saracroche app don't really have this problem anymore.
Credits for this incredible independent app, available on third-party stores. Even better, the dev has added OpenStreetMap information about legit enterprises calling you.
At least most of the Spanish one can be banned by blocklisting a whole company. which is what I did following a guide I found, and have reduced my Spam calls from 2 per day, to 3 per year.
However, the only way to solve this I believe is that you could once you get an unsolicited call to press a combination like ##01, and automatically this is passed to an agency that deals to punish whoever is behind the call in real time. At least if they call from a national number.
some of the third-party apps can show if a number is potentially a spam or a business. it's handy when your phone number is listed in the business directory to avoid those annoying calls.
Spam is generally defined as "unwanted and/or unsolicited communication". Which I'm pretty sure an unsolicited sales call, from a genuine business, still is.
I run a few small businesses and quite regularly get unsolicited emails/calls.
There's absolutely a real, qualitative difference between contact from a real human being who respects everyone's time and has done actual research, and someone who is just playing the numbers game and blasting as many people as they can (regardless of how "warm" the leads are).
It's a bit of a spectrum, but if someone has taken the time to handwrite and research an email or call, I'll at least try to give them the courtesy of a response.
Are calls originating in France a major source of these unsolicited calls? According to the article, a lot of the calls are coming from Morocco, outside of their jurisdiction.
I'm in North America and most of the calls I get are using local numbers, often spoofed from (I suspect) South and South East Asia. Good luck enforcing Canadian or American law in literal slave camps on the China-Myanmar border.
Morocco is just where lots of french-speaking call centers are located. The industry generates a non-negligible part of Morocco's GDP and most of the clientele is from France. So yeah, Morocco may be right to be concerned by an eventual shrinking of the market.
The call centers themselves are in Morocco but the calls never come from +212.
Yes, "just". Because the Morocco bit of the article is mostly inconsequential. Those unsolicited telemarketing calls are extremely annoying no matter who is calling and from where. That's what this is all about.
> Or is it deliberately done because it is cheaper?
Well, of course it is.
> Why not have these in France proper giving jobs to French people?
Because you would have to pay them French wages, which would make no economical sense. If anything, the fact that most of that industry is abroad probably makes it easier to pass such a law.
If a legitimate French business contracts with a Moroccon call center, they will then of course follow French law since the French business is liable.
As for international scam calls, not sure what the situation is in France and what measures they have in place, but one relatively easy way is to block international callers from spoofing a local caller ID, which decimated these calls in Finland a couple of years ago:
https://traficom.fi/en/news/obligations-regulation-come-effe...
So, this is specifically for telemarketing call, not scam call. In the context of telemarketing, it doesn't matter that the company call center is outsourced in other country. The company who contracted them are in France, trying to sell their business in France, they are responsible.
So if you get a telemarketing call from RandoCallCenterCo S.A trying to sell you on BusinessABC Ltd., they have been contracted by said company to do so and BusinessABC Ltd. will be on the hook.
All calls at least appear with a Caller ID from France (+33). Are they really from france or just spoofing them is anyone's guess (not really, former French colonies in the Magrheb like Morocco make good money running call centers for French numbers).
It is possible to "spoof" numbers in the UK. I've seen it. Calls from outside the UK masquerading as UK numbers. They tend to use London numbers which is the main giveaway.
I'd say the deregulation of the telephone industry in America, breaking up the baby Bells, etc would have probably been the biggest hand.
We broke everything up and let any old player enter the telco world over here which broke the entire sanctity of the security of the telephone network.
In the UK, a lot of the calls were coming from India and vsrious countries in Africa. I think India has cleaned up its act, but it's prevalent elsewhere. The callers pretend to be UK-based but there sre a number of giveaways.
There have actually been a number of band aids which have been fixing it. A few years ago I used to receive multiple malicious text messages and phone calls a day, then the Aus government cracked down on verification requirements for senders and I get zero.
I still get constant unsolicited sales calls but these are technically legal.
Current law forces them to use known phone number ranges and to my surprise they respect it. I'm using an app that blocks those ranges, I receive about 3 unsolicited calls per day they're all blocked. We even have a phone provider that can block them for you.
I fear the ban will just make them use random numbers we can't block
As soon as I realise it's a spam call, I just put myself on mute and let the spammer blabber himself/herself. They get frustrated and never call me again.
Interesting someone voted this down when literally I was asking how it will affect unemployment rates, not suggesting I am a fan of robocalls and telemarketing. Guess I was not being clear enough that was not a rhetorical question or some sort of pleading for unsolicited calls. Note, not posting to complain about the vote down but to be more clear.
Another distraction, probably useless in practice, and in typical French government fashion they carved out a number of exceptions including to sell you subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, because...
In my experience, GDPR works wonders here. After saying I do not wish my personal information to be processed and revoke any consents a few times I do not receive these calls anymore.
A business can call another business it there’s an existing relationship. This means you can introduce an upgrade, a new product line, or something unrelated to their current contract - but the contract needs to be there first.
Other than that, the business needs the call receipient to opt in. They can dop this on a webform, a physical form, or by initiating the contact and, say, leaving a message for the vendor asking to be called back. It means the business needs to concetrate on avenues other than cold calling for getting themselves in front of a prospect.
Great idea!
Telemarketers have ruined the phone network for me. I haven't answered an unknown call for the past 10 years, which sometimes means I miss important ones. 99.9% of all calls are an attempt to get money, and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage.
A ban is the right idea but I wonder how they can handle it, logistically. I think there needs to be a technical solution.
A national "whitelist", where hospitals, doctors, utility companies and such can register to get their numbers whitelisted perhaps, combined with a setting on phones that block any non-whitelist number.
Each country could maintain their own whitelists, and corrupt nations selling whitelist status to scammers would get blocked in any other country at least.
I never understood what are the technical obstacles to building the phone network in such a way that caller numbers can not be spoofed or suppressed. Then, you could just build a system where receiving an unsolicited phone call from a commercial entity entitles you to a compensation in small claims court, to the tune of 50 EUR, unless the caller can prove that you explicitly authorised them.
The problem is that it's a network. The hard part of networking isn't the technology - it's the other people. And short of a government regulation or a monopoly, they'll never all agree.
STIR/SHAKEN has an exception for calls passing through TDM trunks, which don't support it. This created a small industry for passing spam calls through TDM trunks. Such calls can trivially have their caller ID spoofed.
Historically, in a world of analogue phone lines, spoofed phone numbers were a legitimate feature: if my business has more than one phone line, each of those lines is going to have its own distinct number; but I'm going to want outgoing calls from any of those lines to appear to originate from the same number (the one that I put on my promotional material, invoices, etc.).
Much the same as e-mail, identity within the phone system was, historically, entirely built on trust (because only Ma Bell could make configuration changes, and they could verify that what their customer was asking them to do was legit). Those assumptions were carried through deregulation, and are very deeply entrenched in the technical design of the network. Changing them will hopefully become easier over the next few years as analogue service is turned off entirely (e.g., BT/OR in the UK are set to turn off all analogue phone service by the end of January 2027).
The only limitation is cold hard cash. The phone companies make big bucks from telemarketers by providing an endless list of new numbers and multiple lines. The whole racket wouldn't work without the companies' greenlight.
It would work until you need to route an international call.
And there's a lot of telemarketing and scams happening across country lines.
I mean, they should still do it. It's just the first problem they'd face.
That's fine. International calls pay a dollar a minute. If telemarketers had to pay that they'd be out of business.
In Spain we have something called "Lista Robinson" (in Sweden exists something similar, called "NIX-registret") which are basically opt-in lists where you can enter your phone number, then once the new lists been distributed, the telemarketing companies cannot call you, if they're doing things properly. If they call anyway, you just mention you're on the list, they hang up, and remove your number from the list they have, eventually you stop getting calls.
I think in both countries these methods are supported by actual laws, one via "advertising-exclusion systems" that the companies need to respect, and in Sweden via the Swedish Marketing Act which forces companies to not call people who've "clearly objected to that method" or something similar. I'm sure similar laws and lists exists in other countries too. Obviously hospitals, doctors, utility companies and similar don't cross-reference against these lists, as they have actual relationship with you already.
Both in Sweden and in Spain I used to receive a lot of spam calls, like multiple per week, and once enrolled on these lists, the calls are non-existent, the only telemarketing calls I get now are from the companies I already have relationships with, which happens maybe once a month.
If you suffer greatly by the constant spam calls, like I did once before, do take a look and see if there are similar opt-out lists in your country :) They may take a month or two before actually eliminating all calls, but they do work, apparently.
We have a similar list in America [1] and Canada [2]. Unfortunately, like any regulation, its efficacy is only as good as its enforcement, so my understanding is they're both routinely ignored. Particularly grim for the Canadian case -
> In January 2009, numerous media and consumer advocacy organizations reported that anyone can use false information pretending to be a telemarketer and download a set of numbers from the list for a $50 fee. It took their reporter ten minutes to do so. It has been proposed that list may be being downloaded and used as a telemarketing list overseas, where there's little that can be done as the CRTC has no jurisdiction outside of Canada
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Do_Not_Call_Registry [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Do_Not_Call_List
From what I can tell, many/most of my “telemarketing” calls are really scams.
And the rest are political calls, which are exempt. This the most annoying, come election time, I get 5-6 texts or calls per day asking for money or votes.
> anyone can use false information pretending to be a telemarketer
I suppose many people would wonder what the difference is between a legitimate caller you don't want and a fake one.
Same in Norway. I have been on the list for decades, and I never receive any unwanted calls – except from my mother (j.k love you mum!)
I am not sure why it works so well here. I have vague recollections of news articles about it being ignored in the past. I guess they just struck down hard on those. Also, I imagine if you put yourself on that list you would be really grumpy if someone called to try to sell you something.
> I am not sure why it works so well here.
I'm guessing (since Norway and Sweden tends to be more similar than different) that Norway also have something similar to the Swedish "Marknadsföringslagen" ("The Marketing Act") that effectively outlaws companies from calling people who obviously don't want to be called. They quite literally get fines if they call people on these lists, hence the companies actively cross-reference against them.
I've worked in cold-calling telemarketing in both Sweden and Spain in my previous life, both companies I worked for were deadly afraid of accidentally calling people on these lists, and actively instructed employees to basically say "Sorry", hang up and flag the number if someone mentioned the name of the lists.
It was the case in France too, it was called Bloctel; you just had to register your phone number and telemarketing companies had a legal obligation to look it up and not call you.
So it worked for a time, legit companies stoped calling; however most people didn't knew about Bloctel as it was little advertised.
Meanwhile, spam calls turned into scam calls, and a real issue especially with the elderly.
So I think that banning all unsolicited calling kills two birds with one stone, spam becomes illegal and scams as a consequence becomes easier to spot as there are no more unsolicited calls.
Most countries have these no call lists but they are fairly useless as there is no enforcement.
I've even heard stories of some scammers exclusively using such lists, as they are pre-verified!
> Most countries have these no call lists but they are fairly useless as there is no enforcement
What country are you in that it doesn't work in? I know for a fact it works in Spain and Sweden, but it'll really depend on the country. You'd help by others by being a bit more explicit :)
> I've even heard stories of some scammers exclusively using such lists, as they are pre-verified!
That does suck and seems counter-productive indeed! Even more curious what exact country you're talking about now.
It works versus serious companies cold calling you. Scammers and semi-scammers still call. There is some need to adress what it doesn't solve too.
Dude, what country? In Spain or Sweden, I literally don't receive any calls from unknowns anymore, scammers nor telemarketing. Please specify the country so we can know what country you're talking about, and what the name of the list you enrolled in is.
Worth knowing for people who might not know; large telemarketing companies have campaigns on the internet to spread FUD about the effectiveness of these lists, so less people enroll. I'm not claiming that you is one of these, but unless we're being clear what lists/countries we're talking about here, it's borderline FUD rather than helpful to the conversation.
We have a "do not call" list in the us. It's effectively worthless.
That just sounds like you don't actually have a "do not call" list, you have something that is trying to be a "do not call" list ;)
Speak with your local politicians to fix the issues that bothers you. They don't listen, out on the streets and protest. Same way civilians communicate with their governments in every other democracy :)
Can't remember right now if it's a EU or a Spain thing, but here they made mandatory to use real numbers on the Caller ID, so you can't use fake or hidden numbers for telemarketing. That way, of you're abusing, your line can easily be tracked, blocked or fined.
There has been some waves of spammer calls, more like "fake job offer calls" or things like that, coming from cell phone numbers, and there's still some telemarketing, but it is way way lower than, say, ten years ago. Orders of magnitude .
I wonder how much we even need international calls from unknown numbers.
In my life I have literally never legitimately had a call from an unknown number outside of the country. I guess it could be different if you have many connections or business deals internationally. But I feel like the average person could restrict inbound international calls to contacts only and be better off for it.
In the EU its not uncommon to receive phone calls from other countries. Just the other day I received a large package and the driver called with an international number to make sure I would be home to receive it.
Delivery companies would adapt and drivers would have work-only dumb phones with correct country SIMs. Problem is, spam & scam callers would adapt as well.
> In my life I have literally never legitimately had a call from an unknown number outside of the country. I guess it could be different if you have many connections or business deals internationally.
There are a ton of us who are from one country, but moved to another, maybe more in EU than other places (not sure), but I really wouldn't say it's uncommon or even out of the ordinary. And I think most of us in this situation, have received/made international calls at least once in our life.
I think its way different in the EU vs the USA. In the United States, the number of people with passports HAS dramatically increased in the past 30 years, going from ~5% to a little more than 50%; but we mainly use them for traveling once or twice / getting into bars when you’re a 22yo with a misplaced driver’s license.
More relevant to the topic at hand, it’s extremely rare to receive an unsolicited call to an American phone number from a number outside the +1 country code. So I’m sure when an immigrant in the US gets an unknown call from their home country code, they can be pretty sure the call’s intentional and worth answering
> it’s extremely rare to receive an unsolicited call to an American phone number from a number outside the +1 country code.
Can't be THAT rare, can it? Isn't 15% of the current population in the US immigrants? Most of us immigrants do receive and make calls to our "mother country" every once in a while, even introverts like me. Or maybe you were excluding immigrants in that as you mention immigrants later?
I hardly ever get international spam calls. Nowadays they seem to mostly come from domestic (Dutch) numbers in the range reserved for mobile phones. When answering the line is silent for two or three seconds (a lot of internet round-trips to somewhere in Asia, I imagine) before hearing call center background noises and a heavily accented English voice saying Hello and trying to pronounce my name. At which point I hang up, so I have no idea what comes after that. :-)
I dont think unknown numbers should be allowed at all, esp for business. I think its a reasonable requirement that if a business wants to call someone they are willing to identify them self.
I think they meant "unknown numbers" as "numbers that are not saved in my phone", not hidden numbers.
Yeah, Spain went this route. We used to get telemarketing calls from random mobile phone numbers (or straight up "hidden" number), so was hard to really know where they came from, unless the person admitted it in the phone call. A year or so that was made illegal, and now every "unwanted telemarketing" call has to come from a landline with a regional code, or the toll-free numbers, which leads to them actually having to register first, so easier to crack down on the ones that don't follow the "anti-spam" lists like Lista Robinson and similar, or break the rules in other ways.
I suppose this is better than nothing, but how do they track companies that don't comply and still use fake/mobile/hidden numbers?
There's multiple scenarios where this has occurred to me:
1. when travelling, hotels or car rentals may need to call or update me with some information
2. friend/family member was abroad and had issues with its own phone
3. some service I was paying for had customer care in a different country
4. buying something from a seller abroad, especially in the nicher categories (like a custom made standing desk) required the seller to call me a bunch of times
There doesn't need to be any kind of technical solution. If a telemarketer wants to sell something, they must declare the name of their company. The company name can be reported to police (or whatever authorities are going to handle this) who can then fine the telemarketers.
And if they don't declare the name of the company? There are a lot of shady people out there. Plenty of them will happily call and give a fake name, or just something vague that sounds important, like, "This is Rachel from cardholder services".
So it turns out we really do need a technical solution, which is unforgeable and easily traceable access to the telephone network. Plus robust enforcement of consumer laws, something wildly out of fashion in the US.
Sounds like a great way for unscrupulous companies to attack their competitors.
First, I am 100% for this legislation, but, as has been mentioned numerous times, here, it needs to be enforced.
We probably also need to marry it with a technical solution, that ensures that unverified numbers cannot be used (no spoofing possible).
Maybe a national "blacklist" of bad numbers, with a "three strikes and you're out" kind of thing.
But, human nature, that nasty old spoiler, is likely to raise its ugly head. I suspect this would be a great place for corruption to take hold.
>The company name can be reported to police (or whatever authorities are going to handle this) who can then fine the telemarketers.
This kind of happens today, but I think the problem is too big. You'll need to employ thousands to process all the complaints and by the time you issue a fine, the company has closed and a new one has started.
That's why you go after the people who run the company if they do that.
So they setup an LLC, or the owner is a homeless guy who signed the paper for $50, or dozens of other options you could do to avoid
I wonder how enforceable that France thing will be
Anti-spam measures work by increasing cost and friction for spammers, not by stopping them completely. A burner LLC costs more than a burner SIM card, so it's a step in the right direction.
How do you know who runs a company, aren't some European countries tax havens who dont share that information?
> This kind of happens today
What do you report to the police if the act isn't illegal?
In some countries, it is illegal to make unsolicited calls to a number that is on an official "do not call" list.
Any number on that list is effectively a honeypot. I guess you could even distribute an app that automates the whole process: put your number on the list, log incoming calls, aggregate the data and report them in batches large enough to catch the government's attention.
Same for online ads. Ads should take you to a landing page saying Google served it for ShadyGambling Inc, Enemystan/Enemypur and clicking further will take you to Play Store.
What if the business says 'That wasn't me?'
I mean, everyone can call anyone and name any company already.
I assume ownership of the caller's number can be logged/checked.
I haven't had too much trouble with telemarketers lately but there is a crowdsourced app in France called Saracroche that can be easily installed on your phone and blocks spam numbers by becoming the caller id service. You can also use the app to report a number and help build the huge database.
> I assume ownership of the caller's number can be logged/checked.
Alas, last time I checked numbers were something that was announced in-band, so it could be trivially faked by the caller. But I'm not sure if that's still true.
Not in the domain at all but wasn't this the purpose of STIR/SHAKEN but the biggest blocker was that large telcos hadn't deployed it? I think Android and iOS dialer app show you whether there was Caller ID Verification done or not so you may be able to drop anything unverified.
In France, thanks to STIR/SHAKEN, this is not possible any more for the fixed phone numbering plans (and telemarketers have to register their phone numbers in a subset of this numbering plan). For mobile lines, this is still not 100% implemented due to the difficulty of handling roaming, but I think it is becoming efficient as I didn't have a telemarketer with a mobile number since a long time (they seem to hide their number now).
Phone number always belongs/registered to someone?
Alas, last time I checked numbers were something that was announced in-band, so it could be trivially faked by the caller. But I'm not sure if that's still true.
Spoofing a number can be a felony on it's own.
Even if there's no explicit laws around that, who's getting billed for the calls?
That's where we can actually use technical solutions though: businesses shouldn't be able to place calls without cryptographically signing their origination with a key derived from their business registration.
Phone calls are essentially end to end voip these days so we have the ability to deliver that metadata.
I don't want to sit thru the phone call just to get the company name to report, that can also be just their competitor name they want to sink.
Most EU countries implemented registration of every mobile number with personal details and national id number. Yet in the same countries there exist entire office buildings with tens of people receiving salaries for spam/scam/cold calling, and they are fully anonymous?!
hospitals, doctors, and utility companies are the last ones i want to have direct contact to me :(
they can continue to send me junk mail and unsolicited texts which already gets filed correctly
friends and family only
I can imagine quite a few scenarios in which I prefer for those companies to be able to reach me.
it's always bad news with those guys; no thanks
Here you are finally Kon5ole. I've been to reach you regarding a car accident that wasn't you fault, is that correct?
When I was getting a D&B number I missed their call I wasn't expecting because I wont answer unknowns and my phone blocks half the calls they think are spam anyway, then had to spend the better half of a week answering spam calls before finally getting what I needed.
I feel this could be solved by crowdsourcing, assuming the support from the major phone manufacturers and possibly governments.
- After a call from an unknown number concludes, the phone could offer an option to the user to mark it as "spam" (blocking the number in the history would have the same effect).
- The spam mark would then go into the central database. If a phone number was marked as "spam" too many times, it would no longer be able to ring the phone (maybe it gets diverted into the "spam folder", like e-mails).
Or am I being too naive here? What are the obstacles for something like this actually happening?
My google android phone already does this. I get basically no spam calls at all except very rarely. But I go to the spam tab in the phone app and I see there are dozens that got blocked
That would work well assuming scammers and stuff are actually blocked from spoofing phone numbers
You cannot trust which number which is signalled to the end user.
Most spam calls I get is shown as legit numbers. If I call them back they will go to an innocent and unsuspecting user.
Google is already collecting this information and shows numbers as "probably spam". It is hard to enforce this harder even with collateral damage as you cannot trust the number which is signalled.
Legislation is in this case a good thing which might get the telcos to take this more seriously. This needs to be handled on an operator level. Nothing will happen without legislative incentives.
The world is run on SS7 which has a lot of problems which inertia and lacking incentives makes hard to overcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_System_No._7
there are some apps that do this, I used to use truecaller, but here in poland orange phone seems to have better data
The whitelist managed by the government is not a bad idea.
I’ve been thinking how to turn the table so that you could allow only certain parties to reach you if you allowed them to (say you are waiting for a call from the auto repair shop).
I like the idea of a whitelist. But there needs to be a way for you to also manage that white list so that you can allow that repair shop to call you in the next few weeks.
Have you tried call screening? I know for sure apple phones can do this but I believe some android phones can too?
For me, all unknown calls are screened. Which means if someone who’s not in my contacts calls me, they get some automatic voice saying something like “this is apple screen calling, please let me know who you are and why you are calling” The person calling then either hangs up or says something, if they say something I can see the live transcription and answer the call immediately if it’s important.
It’s been incredibly effective. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now with no complaints from anyone for not being able to reach me, and not once have I answered a scam call during that period.
I’ve had a few situations similar to what you describe, some service I’m using like a doctor, realestate agent etc called me and I immediately recognised who they are and why they are calling and answered.
There we go again, technical solutions that doesn't actually solve the problem, yet works for the individual with the right technology :)
Jokes aside, besides just outlawing telemarketing as a whole, there are "bigger" solutions that can help more, like the opt-in "do not call" registries that bunch of countries have, that actually work, and works across landline/mobile phones, regardless of OS or manufacturer :) I'm not sure those lists exists in every country, but every country I've lived in (so far) has had a variant of those, that works.
Marketing ruins everything it touches, from the public square to the internet and from the phone network to radio. I don’t know what the alternative is, but I don’t need one to see this is shit.
These would all help: well funded public broadcasting (for TV & radio); strongly enforced regulations for public advertising (public square); encouragement of open source & open standards; real anti-trust enforcement.
Most of the above exists - the problem is political & regulatory capture constantly undermines and weakens a lot of it.
Yes though most of the calls I get are scams. And most of them come from abroad now because Spain also banned them. It is not a very effective measure
At least a strategy to ignore unknown international numbers has much less collateral damage if any.
All emergencies from unknown numbers that I can thank of will be from local numbers.
I personally answer all phone calls but I have very little of those spam calls (on average once a month perhaps?) And I have learned to just rudely stop the call without saying "sorry, I'm not interested".
Lista Robinson works great in Spain though, enroll there and enjoy the silence :) May take a month or two to really kick in, and if you've already enrolled but it's not working, check that the details are 100% correct. Worked both for me, my wife and tons of friends, although it takes time before it works.
Just easy ability to report would be enough. Then the govt can get to the phone number owner and make any middle men also responsible (in "tell us who was your client or pay the fine" way)
You don't need to ban telemarketing, you just need to make void and nulls contracts made by phone.
Do so, and 99% of telemarketers no longer have the incentive to call anybody.
Walk me through an example here.
I'm a telemarketer who calls you up, sells you on something, and charges your card.
What changes in that scenario?
You can't charge nobody's card because in order to do so you'd first need to sign a verbal contract.
At the other side of the spectrum (they are mostly annoying, I agree) how do you keep promoting or selling your product if yiu cannot find your customers?
As a consumer, I don’t want you to find me. I’ll find you when I need you.
There are places that list businesses, like the yellow pages of old, or place ads in publications that are relevant to the services or products you offer.
If you sell tires, and I don’t need tires, I don’t want to hear or see anything about tires.
List it in a register that people can search when they're actively looking for products like yours.
Why should shits be given? Find a better way to advertise than harassing people.
Advertising is such a zero sum game as well. The only reason companies have to cold call market is because their competitors are cold calling. So you have to participate to keep up. If no one can do it, no one is getting a leg up over the rest.
You’re making a lot of assumptions. What is the cost benefit for cold calling? You could conceivably be better off letting the competition bleed. But I suspect a legit cost benefit analysis is hard to come by, mostly because marketing sells itself to management first.
Do you personally buy everything from the telemarketers? If not, how do you find the products you want to buy?
As if we don't already have enough advertisement channels in our lives.
>how do you keep promoting or selling your product if yiu cannot find your customers?
You don't.
My pet peeve is that a full class A attestation is still not a requirement in 2026. The US FCC won't do it. I have no hope from the current administration. However, perhaps France is in a unique position to implement this. The idea is that all calls that have a domestic caller ID will be required to have full class A attestation and all carriers will be required by law to block any calls that do not have such full attestation. Any carrier that attests phone numbers that it is not supposed to should get huge fines and criminal charges. This is my dream for what all Telecoms in the world should do, hopefully beginning with France. This requires broad support within the country and a firm deadline so companies don't shrug it off until the last moment and then demand an extension.
Me too. The problem is now I trust Meta with much of this instead of the FCC which is awkward for me. I use on Messenger and Whatsapp much more often for voice calls, and you know exactly who is calling.
Norway has the same law. I get no spam calls like this from Norway.
What I do get is spam calls from abroad. Often with a spoofed Norwegian number. Why can't operators block this? I know call centers and various things need to "spoof" a number they own, and when I myself call from abroad my Norwegian number will come from outside Norway.
But why can't they attest the numbers somehow? Owner of +47 XXXXXXX is currently not abroad. So why allow someone from the other side of the world to call me pretending to come from that number? Why does the Norwegian operators allow that?
It is technically possible, here in Finland such blocking (i.e. all inbound international calls with Finnish caller ID, except for roaming) has been obligatory for a few years now (https://traficom.fi/en/news/obligations-regulation-come-effe...).
It's even worse than that, I sometimes get calls from phone prefixes which do not even exist in the world.
They don't even check that the number can exist.
I hope they can make it work
We have a ban on telemarketing calls regarding insurance in Switzerland. But we still get them.
So what happens is that insurance agents (which are required to be licensed) don't call them selves. Instead they use 3rd party call centers outside the country which make the calls. They "warmup" the clients to get a meeting in which the agent then in a visit can make the sale.
For law enforcement to punish these people and revoke their licenses they would need to do costly sting operation which they can only do so much.
Essentially useless. My country also banned them and has a "do not call" registry, doesn't stop scammers from calling my phone non-stop.
Also legally speaking all you need is "Check this box if you don't want spam" and the floodgates are open, legally.
You need telco-level detection and blocking. If a cellphone number makes 1000 calls today maybe it's not a real cellphone, is it. Block the calls.
As someone else pointed out, it's not about the scammers. The scammers could however be hampered if the phone system was safer.
There's no reason why the phone system should allow my number to be spoofed, but that's what happens. There might be some companies that benefit from having all outgoing calls shows coming from some main number, but in that case a solution where a set of numbers are allowed to pretend so be some other number could be implemented. The majority of scams I've encountered and have heard about involves someone calling you from a random number, belonging to someone that's not involved, but who are just having their number misused. I assume this is to avoid getting blocked or looking legitimate if the target looks up the number.
At least it gives a legal framework for prosecution.
It's not about scam calls.
Exactly, I think all these regulations in the Europe fail to understand the enforceability of these, any legitimate business won't be making unsolicited calls already. For instance, I weekly get unsolicited calls from a legit recruitment agency in the UK, never ever shared my data with them, they don't even email but directly call in absurd times. I requested removal of my data after months of ignored calls but they kept calling still, reported to ICO but no luck either.
I'm 30+ and was trying to buy some wine yesterday, and was IDed and i'm clearly well over 18 yet they had to take the bottle back as I didn't carry my ID with me. Essentially the same thing with pubs/bars etc, you're clearly over 18 but there is a weird power trip yet in some raves/clubs you still see under 18s being let in.
In France the CNIL is pretty good at enforcing regulation IIRC. And for any small to medium company, the fine should be enough of a deterrent.
I don't think companies big enough to just shrug the fine away resort to much telemarketing here.
This law is especially targeted at legit businesses... It's already illegal for scammers to call.
And I don't think something being hard to enforce is reason enough to not do anything about it. If we truly care about something, we can always find a way.
The main problem and challenge with all these regulations is enforcement. How are they actually going to enforce them?
The U.S. already has very strict rules against unsolicited calls, yet I still get around 20 spam calls a day saying things like "press 2 to be connected" or offering some "$64K loan."
At the same time, I have not received a single unsolicited call from a reputable company.
The same is true for text messages. In 2023, the U.S. introduced stricter regulations, and companies like Twilio responded with very strict anti-spam rules. The rules are now so restrictive that we are forced to stopped using Twilio for text important notification to our my own team.
Yet I still receive dozens of spam text messages every week.
So the question is whether the regulations can actually be enforced against the people who are already ignoring them.
Have an LLM listen in on all the calls and automatically flag unsolicited calls?
That’s a terrible idea. Just think about privacy, pollution, cost.
In Brazil no one uses common phone lines anymore because, in part, of the telemarketers and scams calls. Most people I know enable “silence unknown callers” and use almost exclusively Whatsapp for communication.
The government tried to control this with an official (no call list) that is usually ignored by companies who use third parties and disposable mobile numbers to do their dirty work.
Telcos have the power to control that but they are usually an internal mess and this is low in their priority list as they consider the voice calls a lost battleground.
This is a great move by France, but most of the rest of the world does not suffer from the telemarketing scam hell that Americans do.
I am a US citizen living overseas. I have a US cell number that is only used for 2FA for US financial institutions. No one else has that number. I get more scam calls every day on that number than I do in a year on my local number. It's crazy.
Most of the world has solved the worst of the problem by simply not allowing caller-ID spoofing and by blocking bad actors the way that ISPs block email coming from known bad IPs.
The US already has the STIR/SHAKEN authentication protocols, but the telcos seem to feel no financial or regulatory pressure to clamp down on all the sketchy intermediate carriers the scammers use to bypass them.
Maybe it's America's love of "market-based solutions" that prevents of from solving this problem the way everyone else has?
Rather then actually solve the problem via regulation, the US prefers to turn it into business opportunities to make the situation suck slightly less by letting the telcos sell subscriptions to moderately effective blocking programs and an creating an ecosystem of moderately effective apps.
> Most of the world has solved the worst of the problem by simply not allowing caller-ID spoofing and by blocking bad actors
I live in the Netherlands, and I get several spoofed crypto-scam calls every day. I have also stopped picking up the phone for numbers I don't recognize. My own telephone number has been used to call others for a while, so I would get tons of "sorry I was busy, what did you call about?" return calls from random people when clearly I had not called them at all.
As far as I know, the only reason spoofing is even possible, is so that call centers in other countries can pretend to be calling from a local number, which.. why is that even a feature?
This feels very much like an example of "this should be run by the government" rather than letting this be run by companies.
The previous system never blocked scams because scammers didn't bother to check if your phone number was in the block-list before calling you.
That new law is not going to change the number of spam calls most people will get, as they're not from properly registered businesses.
It's not about scams, it's about commercial telemarketing calls.
Scams have been heavily hit in January when the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers (it's not an actual hard block, but unauthenticated calls will be market as "private number" which are ignored by most people already).
There will always be scammers who register an actual phone number to run their scams, but this rule will at least stop the constant phone harassment that made everyone unplug their landline phone.
> the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers
That is really great. I've had a lot of trouble with calls from spoofed numbers a couple of years ago (it ended when I installed a scam blacker on my phone), and when I looked into it at that time, my impression was that phone companies couldn't block spoofed numbers. On the other hand, if the scam blocking app can block them, there clearly must be some way to detect them.
Phone companies need to do a better job protecting their customers against this abuse.
The problem with spoofing is that there are legitimate uses of it. It's probably solvable by only allowing spoofing of numbers you actually own (so if a hospital has 20 phone lines, they can spoof their publicly posted phone number, but random spammers can't spoof your neighbour's phone number).
The fact that the phone companies haven't done this or much else yet goes to show how little they care.
Or just block international spoofing, to allow the case you mention.
E.g. in Finland the relevant regulation (https://traficom.fi/files/media/regulation/M_28_L_EN.pdf) says (in section 10):
> Telecommunications operators must block calls terminating from the public international interface when the calling party number is clearly incorrect or the calling party number is a Finnish telephone number and the situation does not involve roaming as referred to in section 7.2.1.
It's shocking that anyone can spoof the number of, say, my bank. At least large institutions should have authentication.
>when the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers (it's not an actual hard block, but unauthenticated calls will be market as "private number" which are ignored by most people already).
This is good but not far enough. They should not show up as "private number" they should simply now show up at all. After some time, any networks that even allow spoofed outgoing calls should be disconnected from the phone system.
Someone is paying for the number, make them responsible.
And if that is a company that offers service of lending number for such calls, they deserve to suffer too
Never going to fix the inherent problem og spam calls though.
Even if all would follow the ban (witch they wont as i get frequent calls and am on a legally dont call list) thee is the inherent problem of foreign spammers also often masquerading as local numbers.
If noe positive thing the twlecompanies would het it å bit easier filtrering and the amount would be less.
"God! I only asked her to be a hooker. It's not like I wanted her to work in telesales".
I stopped picking up unsolicited unknown calls perhaps a decade ago, and nothing was lost. It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'. It would be great to have a tech solution for this, really, but I doubt printing another law is going to help with the scammier side of this market.
> It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'.
Assuming you can get access to their phone, only allowing calls from saved numbers would probably be the best solution, assuming she doesn't get random calls from hospitals and the like. If she's still using a landline though, that's a tough one to solve.
I can't just do that, she is an autonomous person, and quite willful also. Despite her age, she is not only as lucid as it gets - she still works (although from home) as an applied mathematician!
> I can't just do that
You can in fact just do that. Whether or not you should is another question.
In context, "I can't just do that" means "I shouldn't do that".
In context, me saying 'You can just do that' means 'You should do that' (barring there being good reason, which I haven't seen so far).
I hate that phrasing. It was weaponised by teachers in my youth. It's still used by some people to close doors and remove options without good reason. I'll make fun of it whenever I can.
Ah, I see! I was a bit annoyed by you seemingly pointlessly correcting the parent, but now I understand your PoV.
> In context, me saying 'You can just do that' means 'You should do that'
That's not very consistent. You wrote that whether they should was another question.
> (barring there being good reason, which I haven't seen so far)
I disagree with you. Someone being autonomous is a good reason for not wanting to take a decision for them against their will.
It follows that:
> It's still used by some people to close doors and remove options without good reason
This didn't happen here. No doors were closed without a good reason, because there is one.
> I disagree with you. Someone being autonomous is a good reason for not wanting to take a decision for them against their will.
Tell that to society at large. No man is an island.
It's a sensible default and should be enabled as such. They wouldn't know the difference if it already were. If they can articulate a specific and valid reason as to why they don't want it that way, then fair. It should be an option open to change. It simply being 'impolite' is somewhere between 'open to interpretation in specific cases' and 'wrong'. Many aspects of what is normally called politeness are constructs that have no or limited use in the current world. This is one of them. My conclusion is thus that their reason is invalid.
I'm making some assumptions. If any are counter to the reality of the situation, then there might be good reasons not to change it.
Edit to your edit:
> That's not very consistent. You wrote that whether they should was another question.
Emphasis is a common literary tool.
> This didn't happen here. No doors were closed without a good reason, because there is one.
I disagree on the reason given being good.
> I disagree on the reason given being good.
Okay, that's what you probably implied in your first reply, and I think that's what's actually interesting to discuss.
I don't think not acting against someone's will is a question of mere politeness. In social care, it's often considered mistreatment to do so.
For instance if it is not considered that an adult who's not otherwise autonomous can't express consent and doesn't want to take their pills, social workers normally shouldn't (and legally can't) force them to take them, even if it's good for them.
At least where I live.
Not all act against someone's will is mistreatment, but it definitely goes beyond politeness.
> I don't think (not) acting against someone's will is a question of mere politeness. In social care, it's often considered mistreatment.
The reason given by the person in question was politeness. I'm not talking about whether or it's polite to change this setting.
> For instance if it is considered that an adult who's not autonomous can express consent and doesn't want to take their pills, social workers normally shouldn't (and legally can't) force them to take them, even if it's good for them.
That's because 'I want to die' is a valid reason. Or at least it should be. I doubt that social workers actually come to their conclusions from that framework. They probably do it like you said; simply acting against autonomy is itself bad within their framework, but this is inconsistent with society's behaviour at large.
Similarly, if GP's grandmother's reason was 'I want to receive random spam calls and calls from telemarketers' or 'I have friends overseas who might not be able to reach me', then I'd have nothing to say. Those are valid reasons. On the other hand, perceived potential impoliteness, which actually isn't, is not.
It's funny and sad to see polite people run into scammers. I witnessed to a young man being almost unable to keep saying "no" for the 20th time to an insistent seller on a beach.
When it happens to me, they're met with silence or "GTFO" after the 3rd question. I am impolite.
To me it's just sad. Scammers and pushy sellers aren't acting in good faith, but polite people seem to be unable to recognise this, or unwilling to change their modus operandi in spite of it. Like, if you know the person in front of you is a knobhead who wants nothing more than for you to part with your money in exchange for nothing, why are you even entertaining the idea of treating them with even a sliver of respect?
Add in the fact that the person on the other end isn't even a human (it's not a human spam calling you; at best it's an automated call which get dumped on a human when it connects), and the whole thing gets even more absurd.
In the last 2-3 years, my impression is that most french numbers receive daily unsolicited phone calls. In 2026 they even started sending scammy “missing delivery” text message with your real name printed on an attached MMS picture (on a parcel to deliver), making it even more real.
Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
Yup, having a French number is unbearable without automatic blacklist apps. I definitely notice it when it breaks after an iOS update, is start getting multiple calls a day. For any french here with an iPhone: Begone works great and has community lists for spam numbers.
The SMS are getting out of hand too, they send you a pre-recorded MP3 in addition to the picture too. At least they don't have enough information to know I don't have a letterbox.
> Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
Yeah, more and more French people are getting annoyed at it, esp. when companies always say "no worries no payment info leaked". I don't care, I can change my credit card but I can't change my personal informations.
And literally last week it's Bloctel that leaked! It's the government managed list of phone numbers that don't want to receive telemearketing calls, where anyone can add its own number to be excluded. Great idea on paper, goldmine of a data leak.
> goldmine of a data leak.
It's a number out of not so big pool of numbers. Spam caller can iterate every number in the country in a month
It's worth quite a bit: the numbers on that list are live, with people smart enough to care, etc. Random numbers are worthless.
#FranceFuite
That's great. Netherland banned them a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I still receive them. Sometimes a lot. A year or two ago, I received calls almost every week from a major TV/internet provider (Ziggo-Vodafone; total crooks). I told them not to call me again, I complained to the regulator, but as far as I can tell, nothing was ever done about it.
So banning it is great, but you still need to enforce that law.
In France it's multiple calls per day.
Especially on landlines mostly used by older people.
>Sometimes a lot. A year or two ago, I received calls almost every week
4-5 a day here.
From the same company? That's crazy. You'd think they'd get the message, but they're really stubborn. Most Dutch companies seem to obey the rules, but this one (and it's a big one) clearly does not. I still don't understand why they weren't fined into oblivion.
Were you a former customer of Vodafone-Ziggo? If yes, did you delete your account?
Even if, they shouldn't call me again after I tell them not to.
Related: https://saracroche.org/
I was about to talk about it for my fellow citizens ; clearly an awesome app!
Fun fact, Bloctel, the service that was supposed to allow us to ask not to be harassed, leaked last week... https://www.universfreebox.com/article/596529/piratage-de-bl...
This app has saved my mental health
In my personal experience basically all spam calls in France come from a fixed set of number prefixes. [0]
So phone companies could just offer to block those prefixes - it would be a trivial solution to the problem. But it's not an option [1], so either they make good money from those calls, or there's some other hurdle or legal issue.
Either way the new law could (in addition to making it illegal for companies to make spam calls) also simply have mandated that network operators block the known ones. Too bad.
[0] https://lemagdelaconso.ouest-france.fr/dossier-2418-demarcha...
[1] https://communaute.orange.fr/t5/mon-telephone-par-internet-e...
No, that's a bad idea. There's no hurdle or legal issue, and money isn't behind it either. Those "prefixes" (area codes) are all the same segments of this or that national numbering plan that are also allocated by legitimate businesses both for placing legitimate outbound calls to their customers and for numbers that connect e.g. switchboards/IVRs to serve customers who are calling in.
I don't know about france, but in Italy the phone network is pretty much dead except for spam calls. No one uses it anymore.
I had a bit of a funny situation happen where putting myself on the do not call list stopped calls from more reputable sources but also caused an even bigger increase in sketchy calls. I switched to using a free service tied to my phone company that makes callers enter a number before being forwarded. Turns out nearly 100% of these remaining calls were automated and got dropped. Turns out sometimes you need two fences to make good neighbors.
This seems so much of a no-brainer to me due to scammy calls to elderly and pure time loss responding to calls it is interesting not much has been done about it in other countries. I guess the telemarketers have a good lobby.
Living in France, right now the only kind of spam calls I am getting are prerecorded voice loops.
I admit they are done pretty well, it took 2-3 different calls (accross months) for me to notice I wasn't talking to a real person !
I think Italy did something similar a couple of years ago.
You would need to put your number in a special register to opt-out of these calls.
I don't know if this ever worked or not, but giving your number to government feels odd to me so I never signed up. It's a lot more simple to just outright block unknown callers.
Sweden has such a system*, and a couple of related laws, since the early 2000s. In my personal experience it works very well here, and I've never heard friends or acquaintances complain either about getting unsolicited calls despite having signed up on the list. An identical system would of course not perform equally in any other country, depending on local "telephone culture" and general moralities.
* https://nixtelefon.org/
How is this possible?
We have been chided over and over and over again on HN by the fine citizens of the E.U. that unsolicited telemarketing calls are purely an American problem, are completely unheard of in Europe, and that this never happens in "civilized" nations with "a functioning legal system."
And what about those marketing people who approach you on the streets? Can we make that illegal too? And the people going from door to door?
How many door to door salesman do you encounter? Where do you live, if you can share?
I haven't seen one in decades, and even then it was usually some pamphlets or books to support a cause or the other.
On the phone (Italy), OTOH, I used to get daily scam call to buy "Amazon stocks" or change utility providers or install water filters. That seems to have massively faded out due to new regulations tho.
Ireland, small town, average reputation housing estate: 1-2 per week. Primarily charities, ISPs and energy companies
Probably a bit more than one per year. Mostly painters telling me I need to repaint.
Norway.
Jehovah's Witnesses, across Europe, still even nowadays. Some other minor religious sects targeting elderly, usually offering care or attention followed by vicious takeover of real estate.
Only because you have not been profiled as lone and vulnerable, doesn't mean the practice doesn't exist:)
I'm pretty sure that would fall under freedom of religion rights, and it couldn't be banned. Especially as proselytizing is a well known and well established religious practice.
Don't conduct your religious practices onto me please.
I'm personally atheistic, and thus have no religious practices whatsoever. However, just like it's legal to build churches, to ring church bells, to wear visible religious imagery, it's also legal and highly protected to talk to others, even strangers, about your religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
I know JWs go door to door but I don't think they sell anything nor do they ask for donations - all their stuff is free? To qualify as a salesman you'd have to be selling something, surely?
My local C of E cathedral sent out a mailshot during COVID asking for donations with a range from £50 - £1000 options on the card (yes, really). I've never had anything like that from JWs.
I get visits from the local air ambulance team looking for donations but I'd classify them as a charity, not a salesman. Even though the person is under contract (employed) to do the task of going door to door, it would be a charitable engagement and not a sale. I asked the last guy if he got commission - he said no.
DON'T APPROACH ME WITH YOUR RELIGION. PERIOD.
I understand the sentiment but I don't understand why you're shouting a response at me; I was trying to highlight the difference between charities and salesmen.
I think your issue is with religion, not sales people, which is what this article is about.
No, you cannot hide behind "but I'm not selling anything".
Because then a marketing person could say "but I'm only trying to make you aware of $PRODUCT; I'm not trying to sell it!"
Yes of course. But I was saying of the people I've had at my door, only some have been trying to sell things, which is what a "salesman" is.
The guy from the local baptist church gave me a some book about being saved by Jesus (it had instructions on how to pray I think? dunno threw it away) but he didn't ask me for any money.
By contrast, the Lithuanian girl who was trying to sell religious books (no idea who they were - some encyclopedias? it was very odd) was trying to sell them to me (nice girl, had come to this country and was living in a dorm? was confused why UK taps had hot/cold separately instead of a combined tap). The guys scamming me about a roof repair were definitely not doing it free. Nor were the guys trying to get me to switch internet provider, nor the guy offering me window replacement and double glazing, nor the woman selling me "lucky lavender", nor the guy selling sponges and cleaning products for tiny amounts of change.
That's what I was saying - people who ask for money or donations are salesmen. People who don't, aren't.
Nuisance religious callers and general unsolicited visitors is another topic. The article is about sales calls, not general nuisances.
> The article is about sales calls, not general nuisances.
So someone calling you to "make you aware of $X" does not count as sales?
And they would be permitted to call you?
I hope they fix this loophole quickly!
In the UK the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is the register for saying "I don't want unsolicited live sales or marketing calls". "Making you aware of" on behalf of a business is a marketing call, so there is no "loophole" to fix.
If the business ignores the rules, there is little that can be done legally.
UK law differentiates between businesses, charities and individuals. I do not know how it is done in other countries, but in the UK you can't pretend that a lone individual ringing you is a "marketing" call, no matter how much you dislike the other person or their topic. If it is a person ringing on behalf of a business, it's a business or marketing call, and therefore subject to TPS.
I do not know how registered charities (not businesses) relate to TPS. I haven't received a call from a charity that I can remember, but my grandma once did get a call from the RSPB whose telehandler seemed oblivious to her having suffered a stroke with speech difficulties, and subsequently arranged for a boatload of bird seed and pamphlets for her to distribute (which would be impossible!).
TPS also does not apply to individuals, which is why any individual can lawfully ring someone else, unless the calls are repeated (harassment), but again that doesn't fall under TPS.
You can become "ex-directory" to stop your number being listed, but this doesn't stop organisations just iterating phone numbers incrementally hoping to find someone.
I do not know if you're in the UK, but you can see the definitions of problematic calls and what you can do according to OFCOM here: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/scam-calls-and...
For visitors to your door, you can put a sign up. I have. It stops all visitors. I also have a video doorbell so I can decide whether I bother answering the door.
I get several a year (UK). So far in 2026, I've had:
* Jehovah's Witnesses
* people offering to steam clean my roof/drive
* the local Fibre company trying to sign me up.
* well known scammers who claim to be on some kind of prison release scheme selling overpriced kitchen/household tat
What other kind of infantilizing laws do you purpose? Perhaps they should also make it illegal for people to interact with you if you find unpleasant? Ban small talk at checkouts?
Ban "give a tip", "donate to charity", and "buy insurance" in checkout and payment screens, yes please.
Sounds good. I see no reason why not treat all that with same distaste as say sexual harassment.
Yes please!
In my country door to door sales are illegal.
Telemarketers here have been banned in various ways for i don't know... ten times? in the last ten years.
As long as service providers are not held accountable for, and they let the scammers spoof the caller ID, the problem will not be solved
__then you start investigating, and see where these call centers come from and who they are tied with..__
Using the web is basically impossible without an ad blocker, and having a phone is basically impossible without a call blocker.
Spam has taken over every form of communication, but luckily there are easy ways to stop it.
I use AdGuard as ad blocker, blocks ads as a browser extension and ads on websites and apps as a mobile app. For telemarketers I use Should I Answer, it works GREAT. Never ever receive a single call from a telemarketer, they all get blocked automatically.
The service that was managing this before (Bloctel) was just hacked https://frenchbreaches.com/alertes/bloctel-mshxaq0ysyd27ca7f...
French video explaining how one particular telemarketing scam works in France:
https://youtu.be/1HoU17dIEos?is=8giBMS_TRJEvmzM3
I'm really curious to see what impact the new law will have on this scourge.
The only effective way to police this is to make the telco accountable and have a reporting system. Someone is terminating the calls and getting paid for doing it.
Automatic filtering on modern iOS has been a game changer here. Assume Android has something similar, but I can't speak highly enough of that one feature
If only it didn’t show the missed call pip for filtered calls.
I use SpamBlocker for filtering (available on F-Droid) to block calls, and with at least newish Samsung there is an option to hide blocked calls in the menu of the phone app.
I've got it configured to block on a country basis, with previous calls and contacts as a whitelist - that works for me.
I found a good solution for that - just remove the "phone" app from the home screen.
Yeah… I’m an old. I still make and receive phone calls pretty regularly.
I do too. You don't need to have the phone app on your home screen to do either of those.
Let's hope other countries follow suit. Next, let's go after the email spammers! YES!
Note that in France, telemarketing calls are already required to use specific number prefixes. This is already very useful: you can immediately tell whether a call is from a telemarketer just by looking at the number prefix.
> Note that in France, telemarketing calls are already required to use specific number prefixes. This is already very useful: you can immediately tell whether a call is from a telemarketer just by looking at the number prefix.
This is useful only for the few who care enough to operate legally. I activated a white list mode that prevents any call from a number that isn't in my current phone book because there's a constant flood of calls from regular mobile numbers (prefixed 06), most likely from spoofing. The phone network is unbearable in France without a white list mode.
A welcoming move.
I am from India and I use Truecaller premium to filter calls. It has become a big head-ache, making us to miss important calls
Actually, people that installed the open-source Saracroche app don't really have this problem anymore.
Credits for this incredible independent app, available on third-party stores. Even better, the dev has added OpenStreetMap information about legit enterprises calling you.
https://saracroche.org
(of course its better to forbid them)
Surprised it’s not banned there yet. It’s banned in Czechia, so I was expecting it to be the same across the whole EU.
At least most of the Spanish one can be banned by blocklisting a whole company. which is what I did following a guide I found, and have reduced my Spam calls from 2 per day, to 3 per year.
However, the only way to solve this I believe is that you could once you get an unsolicited call to press a combination like ##01, and automatically this is passed to an agency that deals to punish whoever is behind the call in real time. At least if they call from a national number.
Phones could be set to "allow incoming calls from contacts only" by default.
Then a spammer has to persuade you to add them to contacts before they spam you
some of the third-party apps can show if a number is potentially a spam or a business. it's handy when your phone number is listed in the business directory to avoid those annoying calls.
I suspect the data may be misleading. Unsolicited sales calls from genuine businesses are not the same as spam/scam calls
i don't want either, unless you're calling about a legitimate transaction i initiated, don't ever call me unsolicited
Spam is generally defined as "unwanted and/or unsolicited communication". Which I'm pretty sure an unsolicited sales call, from a genuine business, still is.
The pictures are identical.
not the same as scam, but how is it not spam?
I run a few small businesses and quite regularly get unsolicited emails/calls.
There's absolutely a real, qualitative difference between contact from a real human being who respects everyone's time and has done actual research, and someone who is just playing the numbers game and blasting as many people as they can (regardless of how "warm" the leads are).
It's a bit of a spectrum, but if someone has taken the time to handwrite and research an email or call, I'll at least try to give them the courtesy of a response.
Are calls originating in France a major source of these unsolicited calls? According to the article, a lot of the calls are coming from Morocco, outside of their jurisdiction.
I'm in North America and most of the calls I get are using local numbers, often spoofed from (I suspect) South and South East Asia. Good luck enforcing Canadian or American law in literal slave camps on the China-Myanmar border.
Morocco is just where lots of french-speaking call centers are located. The industry generates a non-negligible part of Morocco's GDP and most of the clientele is from France. So yeah, Morocco may be right to be concerned by an eventual shrinking of the market.
The call centers themselves are in Morocco but the calls never come from +212.
>Morocco is just where lots of french-speaking call centers are located.
"just"?
Or is it deliberately done because it is cheaper?
Why not have these in France proper giving jobs to French people?
Yes, "just". Because the Morocco bit of the article is mostly inconsequential. Those unsolicited telemarketing calls are extremely annoying no matter who is calling and from where. That's what this is all about.
> Or is it deliberately done because it is cheaper?
Well, of course it is.
> Why not have these in France proper giving jobs to French people?
Because you would have to pay them French wages, which would make no economical sense. If anything, the fact that most of that industry is abroad probably makes it easier to pass such a law.
>Because you would have to pay them French wages, which would make no economical sense.
So, same for any profession. Why have any jobs in the EU at all then?
If a legitimate French business contracts with a Moroccon call center, they will then of course follow French law since the French business is liable.
As for international scam calls, not sure what the situation is in France and what measures they have in place, but one relatively easy way is to block international callers from spoofing a local caller ID, which decimated these calls in Finland a couple of years ago: https://traficom.fi/en/news/obligations-regulation-come-effe...
So, this is specifically for telemarketing call, not scam call. In the context of telemarketing, it doesn't matter that the company call center is outsourced in other country. The company who contracted them are in France, trying to sell their business in France, they are responsible. So if you get a telemarketing call from RandoCallCenterCo S.A trying to sell you on BusinessABC Ltd., they have been contracted by said company to do so and BusinessABC Ltd. will be on the hook.
All calls at least appear with a Caller ID from France (+33). Are they really from france or just spoofing them is anyone's guess (not really, former French colonies in the Magrheb like Morocco make good money running call centers for French numbers).
My anecdotal experience is yes, most spam calls come from french numbers.
Is there a technical reason why phone numbers would be easier to spoof in North America than other places?
Anecdotally I’ve not heard as much about it being a problem in other places such as the UK.
It is possible to "spoof" numbers in the UK. I've seen it. Calls from outside the UK masquerading as UK numbers. They tend to use London numbers which is the main giveaway.
I'd say the deregulation of the telephone industry in America, breaking up the baby Bells, etc would have probably been the biggest hand.
We broke everything up and let any old player enter the telco world over here which broke the entire sanctity of the security of the telephone network.
In the UK, a lot of the calls were coming from India and vsrious countries in Africa. I think India has cleaned up its act, but it's prevalent elsewhere. The callers pretend to be UK-based but there sre a number of giveaways.
The problem is Phone numbers. No Band-Aids will fix them.
There have actually been a number of band aids which have been fixing it. A few years ago I used to receive multiple malicious text messages and phone calls a day, then the Aus government cracked down on verification requirements for senders and I get zero.
I still get constant unsolicited sales calls but these are technically legal.
Has anyone tried https://www.donotcall.gov/? curious, if folks have other lpts. These calls when they happen are relentless.
Current law forces them to use known phone number ranges and to my surprise they respect it. I'm using an app that blocks those ranges, I receive about 3 unsolicited calls per day they're all blocked. We even have a phone provider that can block them for you.
I fear the ban will just make them use random numbers we can't block
As soon as I realise it's a spam call, I just put myself on mute and let the spammer blabber himself/herself. They get frustrated and never call me again.
Hasn't been already the case for a while now?
Oo
(and I am french)
I wonder how this will affect their economy and unemployment rate?
Interesting someone voted this down when literally I was asking how it will affect unemployment rates, not suggesting I am a fan of robocalls and telemarketing. Guess I was not being clear enough that was not a rhetorical question or some sort of pleading for unsolicited calls. Note, not posting to complain about the vote down but to be more clear.
Or: How to transfer less money from old to young people.
(I am jesting. Fuck telemarketing.)
Another distraction, probably useless in practice, and in typical French government fashion they carved out a number of exceptions including to sell you subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, because...
In my experience, GDPR works wonders here. After saying I do not wish my personal information to be processed and revoke any consents a few times I do not receive these calls anymore.
Where is ‘here’? France?
It works for those who want to be sorta legal. Usually I ask to talk to their GDPR officer first thing. Call ends.
But not everyone wants to be sorta legal.
Article is not clear. Does this law blocks B2B calls? If so then it can cause damage to the business.
A business can call another business it there’s an existing relationship. This means you can introduce an upgrade, a new product line, or something unrelated to their current contract - but the contract needs to be there first.
Other than that, the business needs the call receipient to opt in. They can dop this on a webform, a physical form, or by initiating the contact and, say, leaving a message for the vendor asking to be called back. It means the business needs to concetrate on avenues other than cold calling for getting themselves in front of a prospect.
"After a joint call by 11 consumer groups" - going to guess its B2C given "consumer groups".