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I live in The Netherlands. I'm called approximately 3 times a week by numbers I don't recognize. Recruiters, telemarketeers and scams. All alike. I've just stopped answering numbers I don't recognize, because it's pointless anyway. If they don't reach out in another way, it wasn't important.

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For me there's two big offenders: KPN and AD. They each tend to call once a week. Recruiters cold-calling is indeed pretty common.

Amount of scam calls I've ever received can be counted on the fingers of a single hand. There was this time that scam texts (usually trying to impersonate either a bank or PostNL) were common, but I haven't received one in quite a while.

Most disturbing were the energy company salespeople that would actually ring the door, and somehow knew _exactly_ how large my consumption was.

FWIW I've been in NL for a little under 2 years and got a fresh Dutch number when I arrived, and I have received zero spam calls. Even after registering my business with the KVK and entering my number into the public record -- when I did that in the states it generated a lot of spam. To be fair, I am reluctant to give out my number to businesses, so perhaps that has saved me from the typical experience.

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