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This is why there needs to be regulation with teeth.

It needs to make business sense to prevent spam/scams by there being penalties for screwing things up, and incentives for doing well. Otherwise you're right, unscrupulous telco companies like to make money by charging scammers to send messages to customers.

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We need regulation and regulators with a minimum of technical skills, common sense and bribery/lobbying being adequately punished that it's no longer seen as worth it.

Currently that's not the case, so the excuse of not being able to trace the source of the spam is successfully preempting regulation as nobody involved has the skills and/or financial incentives to ask "hold on, how come you know who to bill but not who's originating the spam?".

We need a proactive and inquisitive press that questions PR and asks these companies to clarify why they say what they say. Our current media simply reports “In a statement, Company X said Y” and leaves it at that.

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