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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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

#FranceFuite

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

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.

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?

Yes please!

In my country door to door sales are illegal.

If only it didn’t show the missed call pip for filtered 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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".