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Comment by tifik | Hacker News Reader

I spend roughly 50% of time in Canada and the other 50% in Europe, mostly Czech Republic.

I have two phones, and usually just put the one for the country Im not currently in on a charger and hide it away in a drawer, and take it out only when Im packing to go to the other continent again.

The Canadian phone usually gets 50-100 spam messages and missed calls during the 2-3 months Im not using it.

The Czech phone has never had a spam message or missed call on it ever.

I dont see why strories like this would have no bearing on this discussion. Its relevant, anecdotal evidence.

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It's not relevant or useful, though. You're telling us a story about how you use those phones, the implication being that it's unlikely that those numbers have made it onto spam lists because of your usage patterns.

But carriers recycle numbers, often pretty quickly after someone ends their service. The number on the Canadian phone of yours may have previously belonged to someone who plastered the number all over the internet, and used it to sign up for a bunch of things run by people who had no qualms over selling their customer data to spammers.

So no, these stories are not particularly relevant or useful, because they can never take into account the full history.

My phone number is all over the internet - it was listed as the contact number for our company for about a decade. I occasionally receive an unsolicited call from a human trying to sell something business related, but no robocalls or anything. I don’t know anyone who does receive any. It’s anecdotal evidence, but there’s a trend. It’s useful.

One of the reasons I can imagine is that the Bundesnetzagentur is actually pretty quick about disconnecting abusers.

But like.. Im not claiming its the while story, but definitely a piece of it.

And you just took the info I provided, and added another piece of the puzzle. The observation that more spam exists in US/Canada still applies, is supported by my anecdote, and explained by your analysis. To me, very much proving this info is indeed relevant to the debate.

Unless we want to go super meta about relevance and usefulness.

I learned new things, thank you.

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