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?
They don't even check that the number can exist.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think companies big enough to just shrug the fine away resort to much telemarketing here.
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..__
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.
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.
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 fact that the phone companies haven't done this or much else yet goes to show how little they care.
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.
And if that is a company that offers service of lending number for such calls, they deserve to suffer too
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...
So banning it is great, but you still need to enforce that law.
Especially on landlines mostly used by older people.
4-5 a day here.
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.
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.
You can in fact just do that. Whether or not you should is another question.
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.
When it happens to me, they're met with silence or "GTFO" after the 3rd question. I am impolite.
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.
Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
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.
It's a number out of not so big pool of numbers. Spam caller can iterate every number in the country in a month
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...
https://youtu.be/1HoU17dIEos?is=8giBMS_TRJEvmzM3
I'm really curious to see what impact the new law will have on this scourge.
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.
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.
Norway.
Only because you have not been profiled as lone and vulnerable, doesn't mean the practice doesn't exist:)
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 think your issue is with religion, not sales people, which is what this article is about.
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!"
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.
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!
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.
* 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
Credits for this incredible independent app, available on third-party stores. Even better, the dev has added OpenStreetMap information about legit enterprises calling you.
(of course its better to forbid them)
I've got it configured to block on a country basis, with previous calls and contacts as a whitelist - that works for me.
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
Then a spammer has to persuade you to add them to contacts before they spam you
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.
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.
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.
The call centers themselves are in Morocco but the calls never come from +212.
"just"?
Or is it deliberately done because it is cheaper?
Why not have these in France proper giving jobs to French people?
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...
Anecdotally I’ve not heard as much about it being a problem in other places such as the UK.
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.
I still get constant unsolicited sales calls but these are technically legal.
I fear the ban will just make them use random numbers we can't block
(I am jesting. Fuck telemarketing.)
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I wonder how enforceable that France thing will be
What do you report to the police if the act isn't illegal?
I mean, everyone can call anyone and name any company already.
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.
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.
Even if there's no explicit laws around that, who's getting billed for the calls?
Phone calls are essentially end to end voip these days so we have the ability to deliver that metadata.
- 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?
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
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.
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.
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.
Most of the above exists - the problem is political & regulatory capture constantly undermines and weakens a lot of it.
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".
Do so, and 99% of telemarketers no longer have the incentive to call anybody.
I'm a telemarketer who calls you up, sells you on something, and charges your card.
What changes in that scenario?
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.
You don't.