In the EU I get maybe one spam call every couple of months. From the stories you hear from Americans on HN, Americans get multiple spam/scam calls a day, and the vast majority of their inbound calls are spam/scams.
What is going wrong in the US that isn't going wrong in the EU? Language barrier? Regulatory capture?
It's not like Indian scammers are beholden to EU law but not US law.
It’s not an ideals problem. Even very conservative economists would agree that there exists a negative externality in the transaction between the call center and the telecom company on the person being called where there should be some cost on the transaction to account for that externality.
So, it’s not even a conservative liberal thing (intentionally not using party names as those names may not reflect conservative or liberal ideals). It’s a policy problem. Write your member of congress.
I regularly get spam calls in Chinese. My best guess is this is because if they randomly dial Bay Area area codes they sometimes get Chinese people.
No one in the EU (outside UK) will receive a call in English and think this is legitimate
In the US if you call any company you would expect someone with an accent
Here in NL, however, it does seem like scammers are occasionally taking advantage of the comparatively high English proficiency and are trying to scam people in English - this one was doing the rounds for a while: https://www.fraudehelpdesk.nl/alert/engels-telefoontje-namen...
I think several other countries conduct a lot of business in English, but I haven't spent enough time in Europe to know this for sure.
Bless the people keeping that red list up to date.
This thread makes me wonder if Americans have such info (whether a call is a likely spam) automatically pop up when receiving text or calls.
almost all my inbound calls are spam, in the united states. when i've listened to voicemails left, they even have native north american accented people reading the prerecorded scripts, so there's deep roots to the depravity that cross country borders.
Sometimes but not consistently.
Though honestly in the US I get maybe one SPAM call or text a week these days.
We do have that, but it probably depends on the carrier and the type of phone you have. On my iPhone with Verizon, there's a setting to "Silence Junk Callers", in which "calls identified by Verizon as potential spam or fraud will be silenced, automatically sent to voicemail, and displayed on the Recents list."
It's not perfect, though, and I still get a ton of spam calls. As a rule I almost never answer the phone if I don't recognize the number.
Yes, of course we do. Verizon and T-Mobile, at the very least, mark calls as "likely spam" reliably. Can't speak for any carriers as I've not been a customer of theirs for some time.
1. It was introduced only within the last couple of years, even though spam calls have been happening for much longer than that 2. A bunch of calls escape the “spam likely” designation even though I’m on one of the major carriers
So I’d say although we have it, it’s not nearly as reliable as I’d expect it to be.
Turkey doesn't have much interest in stopping this. One could argue they have quite a few bigger problems, crime related or not, to try and shut down a source of foreign currency. Same as India.
As far as I know the solution is to require more anti-spoofing techniques (e.g. SHAKEN/STIR) for caller ID and then cut off the carriers who don't provide that, plus the carrier providing the numbers enforcing stronger terms on their users.
I think the US gets targeted mostly because of language. Indians learn English in school and it's not uncommon for a legitimate call in the US to come from someone with a strong accent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyEoOfSECp0
Indian knows english. It's hard to target non-english speakers.
The reason being someone is reaping massive benefits from whatever loophole allows for this kind of data collection & is shoring up initiatives so that loophole isn't plugged.
Now try the same search with a U.K. resident or E.U. resident you know of. I'd say you will have a markedly tougher time gaining access to similar information, with just a few clicks & without ever pulling out your credit card. I have no clue if U.K. is similarly compromised off late but a few years ago ( prior to Brexit ) it was not the case.
1: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/12/europol-phone-...