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Comment by Kiro | Hacker News Reader

Why are robocalls not a thing in my country? (Sweden)

Because (at least in Germany) it's illegal and comes with very high fines.

> telephone calls to consumers for sales purposes are illegal if the calling company is not in possession of an explicit and effective declaration of consent by the consumer

https://www.limegreenipnews.com/2017/08/germany-federal-netw...

Since a lot of the robo calls are part of scams and illegal, I don't think it's the fear of fines. I believe that market size and language barrier are a bigger issue: Plenty of people speak english, few speak german and even fewer are fluent enough in swedish to convince people to hand over their money.

I was getting what I think was Chinese calls a while ago, I'm guessing their dialler was accidentally calling the wrong country for a while.

The reason the number of robocalls exploded recently in the US is because the FCC's order defining what an autodialer is was overruled.

There is an interesting reply all episode about it: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhk76/135-robocall-...

Might be a difference in the phone systems. Not sure if this is true anymore, but I've heard US caller IDs are easy to spoof, while it is basically impossible in Germany.

Also our regulatory bodies are most certainly stronger in this regard than the FCC.

In addition to the enforcement others mentioned, costs are higher.

Calls to Sweden mobile numbers are $0.07 to $0.20 per minute depending on the carrier, vs $0.01 to US numbers. Plus swedish speaking 'sales' talent is probably also more expensive than english speaking.

A lot of the replies suggest a language barrier being the reason, but we don't really get them here in Ireland, despite English being a national language.

Perhaps because the scammers only speak English? Most of them are in India and I don’t think Swedish is a strong suit of theirs. Just a guess.

Same here in Germany...

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