Hacker News Reader

Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

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...

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.

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com