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Does someone know how this is so different in Europe, are there some technical measures perhaps? As far as I remember, I haven't received a single spam call in

Does someone know how this is so different in Europe, are there some technical measures perhaps? As far as I remember, I haven't received a single spam call in ten years. Apart from a couple of calls from weird countries that I didn't answer, but that's it.

zaarn 8y ago
AFAIK in Germany doing a Robocall is illegal if you didn't get clear consent from the called party first (300'000€ per call, additional 10'000€ if the number was hidden). The german telcos have to my knowledge also started to block large lists of numbers used by the scammers if they are incoming calls. Some stuff still works like callback scams (They ring you for a few seconds, then hang up, calling back is expensive). There is also the difference that the US is 300 million people that basically all speak english, which is a cheap option to hire for in Indian callcenters. Europe is much more diverse and the languages are more expensive to hire for, so it's less profitable.
dkersten 8y ago
Large fines. They take spam calls very seriously here. I even remember a story where a company was fined for sending unsolicited sms messages and then got fined again because the company somehow thought it was a good idea to send an apology sms message to everyone. The fines aren't small.
rkangel 8y ago
The regulation the FCC is threatening to enact has existed in the UK for a little while. This means the source of spam calls is known, and can be fined. Based on my understanding of our phone system it's a bit easier here though, as we don't have the split in operators of the core landline network - it's all OpenReach underneath.
dazc 8y ago
It's different if the caller is also based in Europe but the worst offenders are not. I rarely get spam calls since I rarely pick up unless I know who the caller is and the odd times I get caught I just hang up. MY dad went through a phase of being plagued because he is from a time when it would be considered rude not to engage in the conversation. As a consequence I suspect he was on some kind of suckers list? It took a while to train him off this habit, then he discovered email...

zaarn 8y ago

AFAIK in Germany doing a Robocall is illegal if you didn't get clear consent from the called party first (300'000€ per call, additional 10'000€ if the number was hidden). The german telcos have to my knowledge also started to block large lists of numbers used by the scammers if they are incoming calls. Some stuff still works like callback scams (They ring you for a few seconds, then hang up, calling back is expensive). There is also the difference that the US is 300 million people that basically all speak english, which is a cheap option to hire for in Indian callcenters. Europe is much more diverse and the languages are more expensive to hire for, so it's less profitable.

dkersten 8y ago

Large fines. They take spam calls very seriously here. I even remember a story where a company was fined for sending unsolicited sms messages and then got fined again because the company somehow thought it was a good idea to send an apology sms message to everyone. The fines aren't small.

rkangel 8y ago

The regulation the FCC is threatening to enact has existed in the UK for a little while. This means the source of spam calls is known, and can be fined. Based on my understanding of our phone system it's a bit easier here though, as we don't have the split in operators of the core landline network - it's all OpenReach underneath.

dazc 8y ago

It's different if the caller is also based in Europe but the worst offenders are not. I rarely get spam calls since I rarely pick up unless I know who the caller is and the odd times I get caught I just hang up. MY dad went through a phase of being plagued because he is from a time when it would be considered rude not to engage in the conversation. As a consequence I suspect he was on some kind of suckers list? It took a while to train him off this habit, then he discovered email...