Hacker News Reader

Comment by notRobot | Hacker News Reader

I was on a group call with a bunch of friends a couple nights ago. My Indian friend was telling me that they have very little spam SMSs and robocalls.

They speculated that it is because in India the person making the call or sending the text is the one who pays for it. So spamming is expensive.

Also, apparently spoofing numbers is unheard of in many countries, the US seems to have it particularly bad.

If anyone here is familiar with the technicalities of how this stuff works, what are your thoughts on the hypothesis?

View on HN

> They speculated that it is because in India the person making the call or sending the text is the one who pays for it.

Wait, what, do people in US pay for receiving texts or calls?

Yeah, we do. It sucks because we pay for the spam calls.

Most cell plans now include unlimited incoming calls and texts, so it's not really a problem, but the sender does not pay anything either, which is a problem.

> Yeah, we do. It sucks because we pay for the spam calls.

If the robocaller/spammer doesn't pay for it, I think that explains why these things are so rampant in the US. In Netherland, it's only the caller who pays, and robocalls and sms spam are extremely rare here (at least in my experience).

Although these days, many phone subscriptions come with unlimited calls and texts, so the caller/texter doesn't pay either. Somehow this doesn't seem to have lead to an increase in spam and robocalls.

They are unlimited(fair use applies).

There's negative side to it -- with caller pays system, you could potentially be hit with high call tolls, even if you do not own mobile.

While in Japan, I remember calling a mobile from payphone I could see the balance of the call card going down every few seconds...

Though, these days, I think most of them seem to have shifted to texting and VoIP calling on apps, which are free.

Even with "caller-pay" model, they still have experience good share of annoyances, that many of those caller opted for "one-ring" spam where they would call, but hang up before receiver picks it up.

These days, calling mobile usually costs the same as calling landlines, but I do remember when calling mobile cost more. But even then, at least the caller gets to decide whether to call or not. And mobile phone numbers look different from landline numbers, so you know what you're calling.

The only thing is when the mobile phone is abroad and there are roaming charges; in that case, the callee still pays, because the caller has no way of knowing. But these days, roaming charges have been banned within the EU, so that problem has also disappeared.

Spam SMS are a thing here,even if your number is added to a govt DND database. As far as spam calls go, fintech companies have call centres frequently calling everyone asking if they need a loan.

The telecom authority here has been fighting against misuse of calls and SMS for years now. It all started when the Finance minister received such a call while he was speaking in the parliament :D https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/industry/telecom/raja-o...

Even with all this action the number of calls are quite a lot and this is the reason most folks have Truecaller installed to weed out unwanted calls.

What changes with region is the type of spam you get. I have never received a call for tech support, not to mention you need to provide two-factor authentication for each transaction and the fact that credit card is used by only a few.

Same im Europe (at least the parts I ever lived in). I think it's indeed the commercial incentive - once the caller/sender has to pay anything, however small the fee, it's no longer economical to spam.

I remember making sending emails cost a tiny fraction of a dollar was proposed some time back in the nineties to stop email spam. That was superseded by effective bayesian spam filters. The cost of that is that it's near impossible to self host email servers these days, as all those filters will label you as a spammer. Otoh requiring some payment solution would also be a strong barrier...

> I remember making sending emails cost a tiny fraction of a dollar was proposed some time back in the nineties to stop email spam. That was superseded by effective bayesian spam filters.

That is what made me interested in ML (it was an article by Paul Graham - "A plan for spam"), years later I am an ML engineer.

I get loads of spam text and calls in India(even with DND) so the story is weird to hear.

I'm from India and i get about 10 spam calls a day. Mostly Bank offers

Reply on news.ycombinator.com