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Comment by blackbrokkoli | Hacker News Reader

FFS USA, not every problem is a problem to solve by "the free market". You can see the America-Is-Great Mindset in a lot of these comments: Even the US has a problem with robocalls, so that must mean it's an unsolved problem obviously. So we have to solve it with our superior technology!!

Just no. Almost nobody else in the western world has this problem. How? Regulation. In Germany, if you get reported for unsolicited calling, the Bundesnetzagentur will come to you and give you a very hefty fine, per violation. Problem solved. I remember exactly four unsolicited calls in my life, two of them on a number which was published in a phone book for 15 years.

Spam calling is not something were there is net value created for society so we need an elaborated discussion of what is ok and what is not (like e.g. paid universities). It just sucks. Make it illegal, and then actually enforce that. The idea of creating a million dollar industry to create a telemarket arms race is...not good.

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Would you please not post nationalistic flamebait to HN? It's against the guidelines and we don't want it here, regardless of which nation you have an issue with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I have lived in the U.K. for more than 8 years. I receive spam calls daily from a combination of London and blocked numbers. Everyone I know here also receives them frequently. I’m on the U.K. do not call list. It’s endless PPI, “your recent accident”, and just normal phishing attempts. When I’m in the Middle East it’s endless spam texts. I guess Germany has it figured out but by no means is this an American only problem, or a solved problem in the Western world.

As a counterpoint, I've lived in the U.K. most of my life and very rarely get spam calls (maybe ~5 a year). When I do it's almost always people trying to sell stuff / services to my startup.

Do you own domain names? I began getting this after I was silly enough to leave my mobile number on a WHOIS register. Most of the calls I receive though aren't from legitimate companies and if you call back the number, it'll fail

I'm in the UK and have had the same number for a decade or so, I probably get one a year? They are mainly from foreign companies. If said countries also had our regulations, and a sharing agreement in place, it wouldn't be an issue.

A fair number of them are foreign companies, but the “our records show you were in an accident” calls are very much from the UK.

The foreign companies are basically criminal operations and countries like the US have taken action against them in the past by working with local law enforcement[1].

[1] https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/2179175/mo...

I am in the same situation yet I know people who are plagued by such calls. There must be something that triggers this off?

Having said that, these people will also give their phone number and email address to anyone who asks whereas I do not. If I have to enter a phone number on a form and it's isn't immediately obvious why I should do that then I'll make-up a number.

If you're not doing so already, please pick numbers that will never end up in use by someone else. E.g. for UK: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/inform... (expand the Notes section)

That's a useful list I never knew existed. Thanks.

I'm in the US and I almost never get spam/scam calls, yet people here say they get them multiple times a day. I don't know why some people have such an issue and some people just don't.

I think it's a combination of

- people giving their phone number out to companies that share this data, and

- people answering spam calls. Even if you hang up immediately, they probably have an internal metric that says call that number back more frequently.

I don't do either of those, and last week I had more spam/unknown calls than usual: 4

For online forms that require a phone number, I just insert that company's own number.

Yeah, I get robocalls to my mobile almost daily. My late grandfather would also get calls once a week from the scum running those "Windows security issue" calls. Luckily we were about to give them a right good talking to - it's illegal, but they still do it.

The problem in the UK is that the regulations here are toothless.

The USA too has regulations and levies fines, however, the robcallers and scammers are almost always overseas criminal operations.

I suspect the US is much more of a target because there's many, many more overseas criminals that speak English than German.

My bet is simply that you go where the money is[0].

[0]https://www.justfacts.com/news_poorest_americans_richer_than...

That's a big difference. It says the bottom 20% of Americans consume as much as the average person in my country.

Although this is in 2010, during the crisis, it would suggest a big difference in what I thought the outcome of such a study would be.

This doesn't include savings, it seems. Which are mandatory here.

Note I don't disagree, but that source was on hn a few days ago and is a pretty poor propaganda site. The article:

* redefines poverty multiple times and then comes to the surprising conclusion that the results differ from the NY Times article

* uses consumption in USD as a measure, which is highly problematic, because a) different countries have different purchasing power, which is is the reason almost noone in poverty research compares international poverty using gross consumption b) consumption heavily reflects economic inefficency (e.g. health care costs: If a say Danish poor gets her broken arm fixed for free, she would consume 0$ according to this figure, while achieving the same quality of life out of it)

The usual threshold for poverty (for good reasons) is 50 or 60% of the median income in a country. Which the NY Times article used.

>The usual threshold for poverty (for good reasons) is 50 or 60% of the median income in a country.

If you think half to 40% of people in the Congo are not in poverty you are delusional

That's cherry-picking. Of course everybody in the poorest country in the world, is in poverty.

But the usual measure of relative local wealth, works pretty good.

That measure won't work on the vast majority of the planet. The global per-capita median income is less that three thousand dollars a year. People making 4 grand a year aren't out of poverty.

60% of the median is the definition of relative poverty. This is what the NY Times article was about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty#Relative_poverty

You are free to find that delusional, but if you want to partake in the scientific discourse about poverty, it would be advantageous if you don't redefine the core concept.

Yes, and my point is it's an entirely useless definition. If 40% of the population were billionaires and the remaining 60% were millionaires. The millionaires aren't in poverty.

"delusion: an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder."

It is quite delusional to create new metrics on poverty because ones based on income or consumption don't get you to the result you like.

Are you aware of the difference between absolute and relative poverty?

I mean, really, take a step back and consider these two possibilities:

a) Thousands of researchers have researched the topic for decades, and no one ever considered it problematic to directly compare the poverty in Congo and the US using the same metric. But finally, after als these decades, during a few seconds of flying over a blog link, commenter fuzz4lyfe on hn finds the error and renders decades of research obsolete.

b) You err.

What is more probable?

This is wrong on so many levels it's not even funny. Original HN submission WRT that link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20799705

I think it is because the phone companies (in the US) refuse to identify and block such calls.

Do you have any evidence of phone companies elsewhere doing this?

I used to think this, then I worked at a telco for a while.. The problem is a lot more complicated..

Due to how ILECs and CLECs (incumbent/parent phone companies who own the infrastructure and then wholesalers/resellers who operate on top of them due to competition laws) integrate, how they share and allocate phone number prefixes and lists (this whole process alone is mind-blowingly arcane), and how all phone companies cooperate internationally, it's extremely hard - almost impossible - for them to identify and block these kinds of nuisance calls in real-time.

And don't get me wrong, they could do it.. But the amount of coordination and cooperation that would be required is a non-starter because most phone companies don't talk to each other enough to get this kind of initiative off the ground, even if the money and motivation was there.

Edit: Remember that most (Western) phone companies are 100-year-old institutions, and many still have 50+ year-old infrastructure that runs the underlying systems, and that they can't just throw that away and start over, due to how deeply integrated they are in the public/private communication infrastructure of society, and many of their modern systems are really just shims built on top of that older tech.

Unintended consequences are rampant.

> Unintended consequences are rampant.

Breaking up AT&T into regional bell operating companies[1] (the ILEC thing) was a very stupid decision in hindsight. I don't know what actually happened. Did AT&T simply have smarter people than the US Government did?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

I don't know why people don't get spam calls in Germany, but it's not because of regulation. The U.S. has similiar regulation, and in fact individual consumers can sue telemarketers for $500-$1000 per call.

The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

> The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

The problem is that the US telco providers let them disguise their identity.

In Germany, there are anonymous calls, and calls where you see the caller's numbers. I've never once been called by a spoofed number.

So, it's possible to prevent that, given the political will, and the necessary investments in infrastructure.

I get the same caller id now for spam calls through at&t in usa.

I live in Germany and got multiple spam calls in a relatively small time frame (days) from spoofed numbers. I am pretty sure this is not allowed and might be fined too if caught. But i also know for sure there is not much telcos do against this if you are already in a position to route calls, probably for technical reasons. That said this was the only occasion i got those calls that i can sharply remember and it happened some years ago already.

The telcos are working on solving the problem. The FCC recently changed a rule[1] that was, in part, preventing them from acting. The telcos are also working out the technology that will allow them to block them at the source, and all the major ones are planning to roll it out soon. It's not as if they've been intentionally negligent here.

[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2019/05/15/blocking-and...

The telcos are part of the problem. I work for a company that deals with incoming robocalls -- thousands a day. I have a very long email conversation in my inbox between us (company) and Verizon. The general theme in this conversation thread is

COMPANY: we're getting thousands of these robocalls into our various numbers, will you please help to stop it?

VERIZON: We don't see a problem, everything is fine. Your bill will be there soon.

COMPANY: attached is a log showing 4,000 calls in the last two hours sent through your network and terminating at our location. Will you please help to stop it?

VERIZON: we have investigated the provided calls and we see nothing showing these calls originated from us. Please contact the upstream telco and ask them. Your bill should have arrived by now, pay it.

COMPANY: but Verizon does not provide us with information on the upstream telcos, we need your assistance in stopping the robocallers. This bill is considerably larger than usual because of all these robocalls. Will you please help up stop them?

VERIZON: we recommend your legal team contact our legal team if you feel we are actually allowing robocalls to pass through our network to yours. Pay your bill immediately.

My German VoIP account allows me to specify any caller ID that I like. That includes numbers that I don't own.

lmao

The issue is that the callers speak English, not German. If you go to Nordic countries where everyone speaks English you get similar calls as in the US.

You can spoof numbers anywhere.

I live in Denmark and I don't get calls like that.

Ok? I’m not saying it’s constant, but you do see it sometimes when the scammers try out new regions.

Stuff like this, which is the very typical US scam https://www.thelocal.se/20140505/swedes-targeted-in-new-micr...

European countries in general just aren’t very attractive to these scams, conversion rates are far lower than in English-speaking countries.

E: Another Danish commenter reports the same calls https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20837015

> European countries in general just aren’t very attractive to these scams, conversion rates are far lower than in English-speaking countries.

You mean we are not as easily fooled? I like this explanation.

That’s possible too. But I specifically mean that we’re not as easily fooled by Indian call center staff.

Recently, there as been a lot of calls where older people got called by a fake police detective. The display reads "110" (which is the emergency number for the police in germany). So, if there are countermeasures, they are not effective.

Source:

German Press release PD Westerstede early this year: https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/68440/4174253

Follow-Up a few months later, warning that it's still an issue: https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/68440/4358872

Can you explain the "fake detective scam?" How do they profit from convincing the older person they are a detective?

You can watch Kitboga on YouTube. He calls these centers and walks through the whole scam. Basically they use fear of an arrest to get the target to buy gift cards. It sounds dumb but it works on vulnerable members of society.

Could it be that it's because the calls would need to come from outside the country(probably outside the EU) and there is disproportionately more English speaking people outside Germany?

It's a problem similar to why there are more viruses for Windows, well, it's why there's more Windows machines in the world.

How is it not because of regulation? Robocalls are illegal in Germany and there are very high fines. That seems exactly what regulation is supposed to do and I never got a single random robocall. I got a few calls from my ISP for marketing reasons but after telling them not to call me they added me to the list and I haven't heard from them since. I probably allowed to call me when I signed up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765079

It’s about the language barrier.

It’s just not worth the trouble for foreign criminals to develop German language capabilities.

German regulation does exactly nothing to prevent foreign criminals from spamming Germans with robocalls from foreign numbers, Germans just aren’t an attractive target.

> overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

Is it a real thing?

Good to see this comment. As a European citizen I never understood what this whole robocalling thing was about.

In the Netherlands, there is the 'bel me niet' (don't call me) register. If you have your number put on the list, marketeers are not allowed to call you. If they do, they risk a hefty fine.

As a Dutch citizen I regularly get spam calls, especially from foreign companies buying Ditch numbers.

Not sure if I can agree totally, I get less spam calls on my danish phone number than on my US phone, however I do get missed calls every now and then followed by a call from a "Microsoft Tech Support" which are an awful similar in style to those reported on in the podcast "Reply All"[1] I suspect those are number spoofing as they rarely get the length of the local phone numbers correct.

In case of calls originating from another country will laws and regulation actually be able to do anything here?

[1] https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/6nh3wk/102-long-dist...

In the US we also have a do not call register, however, the register serves as a great list of phone numbers that robocallers can target.

Feels good to read and hence gets upvoted, but it's just not true.

US has dished out far more severe punishments for this stuff than the Bundesnetzagentur could https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/24-defendants-sentenced-multi...

This is not about regulations, lots of these robocallers are straight up criminal operations who will not be swayed by fines.

If Germany has implemented some technical measures against robocalling I'd absolutely love to hear about them! I seriously doubt they have though.

The measures aren't necessarily technical in a lot of cases. Anyone can claim a US number with very little effort. Claiming European numbers usually requires business address verification.

You only need to claim a number if you want to receive calls, you can make calls from any number you'd like.

FWIW I see lots of European countries that require you to provide an address, not many that actually require verification.

Huh? Robocallers fake the caller ids, I can fake any European number that I want. Even without faking I can claim an European number without any verification.

For an example what prevents me as an American to get a British or polish number?

We have very similar in UK, but scammers don't care about no-call lists, and some companies offering physical goods will use Indian (exclusively in my experience) call centres - I don't know the UK law in this area but suspect is not sophisticated enough to apply upstream to those booking people to make nuisance calls.

European here, too, lived in several EU countries, received very few robocalls in my life. Do not think this is due to regulation. Exactly, caller IDs can be spoofed, and who gets the fine then? Should be something else: the way how we are used to purchase services, goods, etc... Or the markets here are too small compared to US that blanket dialing does not justify call termination fees... But not 100% sure.

I am from Europe and and I remember that robocalls were a problem in the past. Until like 10 years ago I received multiple spam calls per week, but then it suddently ended. Now I cannot even remember when I got the last spam call, but it has to be years ago.

So I don't think it must have been a language barrier or a market size thing.

Thanks for the lecture but we do have regulations regarding phone calls. The laws are just being broken by citizens outside of the United States. This isn't uncommon in countries where English is the most widely spoken language.

Germany has "CPP" (calling party pays) billing, compared to RPP (receiving party pays) in the US.

Effectively, a call to a mobile phone costs at least about 0.01 EUR per minute. This puts a lower bound on the cost per robocall.

I wonder how much of the difference in the number of robocalls simply comes down to economics rather than to efficiency of regulators and legal frameworks.

One explanation is that a lot of the scams are for things that wouldn't work in Germany. Like health insurance, extended car warranties, etc. For those sorts of things, lots of commission based referalls are available to the call centers for the US. They just have to send leads or sales, and get money in return.

Also, they are often manned by call centers in places like India where English speakers are easy to find, German less so.

Germany stills has robocall issues, this is nothing more than wishful thinking and a nice dose of European exceptionalism mindset.

Crazy how this gets downvoted. European exceptionalism is exactly what this is.

No-one here has identified any specific effective methods through which Germany or any other European country combats these calls, it's because they can't. Fines only keep local businesses from doing this, but the people making these calls to the US are criminal gangs based out of India.

I'm in the UK, and I used to receive 2-3 spam calls per year. About five years ago, something changed (not my phone number) and I haven't had a single spam call since.

Get off your high horse, you clearly don’t understand what’s going on here. No country in the world has solved this problem, it simply doesn’t exist in some.

Fines do nothing to discourage this behaviour by criminals, the fact that Germans speak German has everything to do with the lack of English robocalls.

If it doesn't exist, doesn't that suggest it's solved?

I get no spam calls on my UK number, which is in English.

In Spain is also solved. You register in a free and public service called "Lista Robinson" (Robinson List) and from that time you won't receive commercial phone calls.

>if you get reported for unsolicited calling

How does that work if someone spoofs the caller ID?

I'm in the UK and I get multiple spam/junk/scam calls a day. What I've noticed is if I try to call back, I'll just get an error tone because the number doesn't exist.

I really don't get the negativity, I'd love to have some system like Verified by Twilio!

Surely it's better to solve a problem through peaceful and voluntary innovation then through coercive regulation.

If Europe would enforce its regulations against robocalls to the US, that would help. Thanks.

The problem is also very easily solved by not answering numbers you don't recognise. If they don't leave a message it can't have been important.

I did that and they kept calling me twice a day from different numbers for months (without leaving a message). Solution was to buy an app for 2€ and block the whole range (Vorwahl). Android should be able to block ranges of phone numbers but I didn't figure out how. Germany this year.

>Spam calling is not something were there is net value created for society so we need an elaborated discussion of what is ok and what is not (like e.g. paid universities).

Stanford is a "paid university". Harvard is too. Are you saying these institutions are a net negative to society? With free market capitalism you get the good and the bad, just like every other system in the world. The difference is you're given a choice.

Many Americans are allergic to the idea of the government doing anything but managing national defense.

And yet, people blindly follow their GPS on their phones all day, all managed and run by the US government.

>GPS,[1] is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Air Force

.. so it's national defence...

Believe it or not GPS is part of national defense. They just also allow civilians to use it too.

Americans have a do not call list. People are prosecuted for abusing it. Yet we still get Spam calls. This has nothing to do with lack of regulation, but by ease of abuse and difficulty in preventing these calls without impacting legitimate uses. Like, say, creating Twilio which uses a bunch of random numbers?

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