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Comment by tnolet | Hacker News Reader

European here. What are these bot calls exactly? Never had one as I guess it’s forbidden where I live.

I recall there were a ton of them in France. Usually pretending to be DHL or another courier asking about a package. Nobody I knew interacted much with the calls.

If you're in Europe, but don't share a language with a much poorer country, you're safe from these.

Telemarketing or political campaigns. Check out the Robocall article on wiki. In Europe it depends on the country. In Poland I receive a few calls daily but they are people calling me, not bots. Never received a robocall here.

In the US, the vast majority of them are simple frauds. For a year I got a robocall every few days from a Chinese woman (in Chinese) that a friend of mine said is a threat to get (the hypothetical Chinese immigrant) me deported unless I pay them.

Right now I'm getting a fake credit card debt collection call (I've never had a credit card in my life, only debit), and a call telling me that I'm eligible to have my AT&T (phone) bill halved (I don't have AT&T phone service) and all I have to do is call the number "on my caller ID." I think those two are both being read by the same woman (not the Chinese one.)

I'm more of a texter than a caller, so the vast majority of calls I get are robocall frauds. I'd love to get a robocall that was just annoying for a change, rather than completely predatory.

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