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Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why I'm not getting this barrage of robocalls. I live in Netherland, not the US, so presumably that's why, but are robocalls not a thing in Europe? Do we not have these kind of predatory companies? Do we have surprisingly effective legislation to stop robocalls?

The only phone spam I'm getting are people trying to sell me new energy contracts (that's something that happens when you have a company for some reason), and tons of British recruiters trying to get me to work in Belgium or Germany for some reason. Very rarely, I get a tech support call from Microsoft India. But always it's real people, not a robocall.

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In The Netherlands there's strict regulation for unsolicited calls [1]. I used to work in a company active in the field of call management and in my experience this is strictly adhered to, the fines are pretty big and will be handed out, so any (well, maybe most) Dutch company involved in this manages this carefully. The maximum fine is €450,000, which seems big enough to work as a deterrent.

1: https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/telecommunicatie/vr...

Yes, they are a thing in Europe too. It's not just to do with entering numbers in "sketchy" websites. It's who resold or leaked your details, what apps you have installed on your phone, or if you were just unlucky.

They are trying to get vaguely smart too - whereas before a number would call from quite far away, so you could assume it was a robocaller. Now, they can be close to your location, which is a bit spooky.

It's apparently easy to get my phone number from the Chamber of Commerce, which is where those energy peddlers get it. Seems like an easy source of phone numbers for robocallers too. And it's not like I'm very careful with my phone number; I've entered it on tons of websites.

Still no robocallers for me. Maybe European data protection measures do work.

Also Dutch here: They are illegal.

You can only call someone if they (indirectly) got the number from you. They are _not_ allowed to dial every number and it has to be done by a human, which works the same as an e-mail costing €0,05: it isn't worth it anymore.

But it being illegal doesn't guarantee a thing if it can be done cheaply and difficult to trace, possibly from abroad. That it doesn't happen means it's not just illegal, but enforced in an effective way.

They are a thing in europe, but you have to make the mistake of entering your phone number on some sketchy homepage for it to start.

You're lucky! In the US, you have to make the mistake of giving your phone number to nearly any business.

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