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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

I wonder how much we even need international calls from unknown numbers.

In my life I have literally never legitimately had a call from an unknown number outside of the country. I guess it could be different if you have many connections or business deals internationally. But I feel like the average person could restrict inbound international calls to contacts only and be better off for it.

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In the EU its not uncommon to receive phone calls from other countries. Just the other day I received a large package and the driver called with an international number to make sure I would be home to receive it.

Delivery companies would adapt and drivers would have work-only dumb phones with correct country SIMs. Problem is, spam & scam callers would adapt as well.

Those calls won't be from a random country on the other end of the world that is outside the purview of EU regulations though.

> In my life I have literally never legitimately had a call from an unknown number outside of the country. I guess it could be different if you have many connections or business deals internationally.

There are a ton of us who are from one country, but moved to another, maybe more in EU than other places (not sure), but I really wouldn't say it's uncommon or even out of the ordinary. And I think most of us in this situation, have received/made international calls at least once in our life.

I think its way different in the EU vs the USA. In the United States, the number of people with passports HAS dramatically increased in the past 30 years, going from ~5% to a little more than 50%; but we mainly use them for traveling once or twice / getting into bars when you’re a 22yo with a misplaced driver’s license.

More relevant to the topic at hand, it’s extremely rare to receive an unsolicited call to an American phone number from a number outside the +1 country code. So I’m sure when an immigrant in the US gets an unknown call from their home country code, they can be pretty sure the call’s intentional and worth answering

> it’s extremely rare to receive an unsolicited call to an American phone number from a number outside the +1 country code.

Can't be THAT rare, can it? Isn't 15% of the current population in the US immigrants? Most of us immigrants do receive and make calls to our "mother country" every once in a while, even introverts like me. Or maybe you were excluding immigrants in that as you mention immigrants later?

This is about unsolicited, commercial, legitimate calls from OUTSIDE of +1 TO a number that is a +1. I don't think it's about person->person calls.

> Most of us immigrants do receive and make calls to our "mother country" every once in a while,

Surely this would be covered by the fact that you're making calls as a "known number" not an "unknown number"?

I dont think unknown numbers should be allowed at all, esp for business. I think its a reasonable requirement that if a business wants to call someone they are willing to identify them self.

I think they meant "unknown numbers" as "numbers that are not saved in my phone", not hidden numbers.

Yeah, Spain went this route. We used to get telemarketing calls from random mobile phone numbers (or straight up "hidden" number), so was hard to really know where they came from, unless the person admitted it in the phone call. A year or so that was made illegal, and now every "unwanted telemarketing" call has to come from a landline with a regional code, or the toll-free numbers, which leads to them actually having to register first, so easier to crack down on the ones that don't follow the "anti-spam" lists like Lista Robinson and similar, or break the rules in other ways.

I suppose this is better than nothing, but how do they track companies that don't comply and still use fake/mobile/hidden numbers?

My own bank in Spain calls me constantly cold from landlines.

Yeah, same, sadly the law makes exceptions for companies who already have existing relationships with you, but at least then you can vote against these sort of spam calls with your wallet.

How long you've been on Lista Robinson by the way?

I hardly ever get international spam calls. Nowadays they seem to mostly come from domestic (Dutch) numbers in the range reserved for mobile phones. When answering the line is silent for two or three seconds (a lot of internet round-trips to somewhere in Asia, I imagine) before hearing call center background noises and a heavily accented English voice saying Hello and trying to pronounce my name. At which point I hang up, so I have no idea what comes after that. :-)

There's multiple scenarios where this has occurred to me:

1. when travelling, hotels or car rentals may need to call or update me with some information

2. friend/family member was abroad and had issues with its own phone

3. some service I was paying for had customer care in a different country

4. buying something from a seller abroad, especially in the nicher categories (like a custom made standing desk) required the seller to call me a bunch of times

Super common when looking for work in the EU tech scene.

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