4 ms·

Do you get a lot of scam calls? In the US this is a problem, I think most of the calls just use telephony software to automate and brute force every possible nu

Do you get a lot of scam calls? In the US this is a problem, I think most of the calls just use telephony software to automate and brute force every possible number. They spoof the originating phone number but they 99.9% likelihood are coming from another country with call centers like India or the Philippines. If you can access every Swedish citizen's data, this could be attractive for scammers especially if you want to target elderly people. What about automated calls in general and spam?

Nullabillity 4y ago
Fully automated robocalls are… just not a thing here. There are some phone salespeople but personally I don't think I've got more than a single digit amount of calls per year.
drakonka 4y ago
I don't think phone numbers are quite _as_ searchable as other information. I get fewer spam calls here than I did in Australia. A few years ago a phone provider called me and actually offered a really good mobile deal, which I'm still on. Another time I had some kind of survey company call. I think there's been a couple more over the last decade, but it's a rare occurrence. Re scam calls - luckily never gotten one of those in Sweden or elsewhere.
ksidudwbw 4y ago
The ability to spoof in the phone system is so stupid. Someone was spoofing being the police here
DavidVoid 4y ago
I don't think I've ever gotten a spam call. I used to get the occasional telemarketer call, but I added my number to the NIX-registry (Do Not Call Registry) a few years ago and I've only gotten one marketing call since then. Regulations around telemarketing are pretty strict here. I did report the one call I got and I got a follow-up email a few weeks later explaining what had happened (the company doing the marketing had experienced a technical glitch [1]). [1] https://nixnamnden.se/2020/10/20-196-20-197-20-198-20-199-20-200-20-201-20-202-20-203-20-204-20-205-20-206 https://nixnamnden.se/2020/10/20-196-20-197-20-198-20-199-20...
chimeracoder 4y ago
> Do you get a lot of scam calls? In the US this is a problem The US is also a large and attractive target, because the population is large and the setup costs of a phone scam can be amortized across a massive group. Remember that scamming is a numbers game - they have to hit massive numbers of targets in order for it to pay off, because the probability of success is so low at each stage. Phone numbers within the US are compatible - there's no longer any meaningful difference between calling someone in Maine or Alaska - and it's easy to spoof area codes across state lines. So a scam that works in one state in the US can effectively be run in all 50 states with ~no change. Sweden is a country only slightly larger than New York City, and an effective scam would likely have to be run in Swedish (a language not spoken widely outside Sweden, and therefore not transposable to another scam) and it's trickier to spoof numbers across country lines convincingly (even within the EU) than it is across state lines in the US. This pattern plays out in a lot of ways, not just for Sweden. In general, smaller countries that speak languages not widely popular outside their home country will be less attractive targets (both for scams and for legitimate business) than countries which have a large potential market (target) size.
- onetimeusename 4y ago
  I was under the impression that most robo dialer's calls originated offshore with spoofed numbers that appear to be within your area code. It's possibly not though, like if someone is taking advantage of targeting a specific carrier's numbers from outside their network but I don't know. That might require the carrier to forward the calls. There are other exceptions for robo calls the callers could be using for themselves. If the robodialers are actually doing this inside of the US we could probably find who these people are. I imagine the majority of calls are made by a few scaled up calling operations. That's what previous arrests for this suggest. Although the technology is catching up and I have been getting fewer calls.
  - chimeracoder 4y ago
    > I was under the impression that most robo dialer's calls originated offshore with spoofed numbers that appear to be within your area code. It's possibly not though, like if someone is taking advantage of targeting a specific carrier's numbers from outside their network but I don't know. Maybe this wasn't clear in my previous comment: the calls often originate from outside the country, yes, but the calls are spoofing US numbers, so there's no way for the recipient to know that the call is from another country. And the calls often try to match the local area code of the recipient. The point is that the scam scales very easily: if you can do it to any person in one state, you can do it to every person in every state (because calling all US phone numbers is essentially equivalent, and spoofing all states is equivalently easy).

Nullabillity 4y ago

Fully automated robocalls are… just not a thing here. There are some phone salespeople but personally I don't think I've got more than a single digit amount of calls per year.

drakonka 4y ago

I don't think phone numbers are quite _as_ searchable as other information. I get fewer spam calls here than I did in Australia. A few years ago a phone provider called me and actually offered a really good mobile deal, which I'm still on. Another time I had some kind of survey company call. I think there's been a couple more over the last decade, but it's a rare occurrence. Re scam calls - luckily never gotten one of those in Sweden or elsewhere.

ksidudwbw 4y ago

The ability to spoof in the phone system is so stupid. Someone was spoofing being the police here

DavidVoid 4y ago

I don't think I've ever gotten a spam call. I used to get the occasional telemarketer call, but I added my number to the NIX-registry (Do Not Call Registry) a few years ago and I've only gotten one marketing call since then. Regulations around telemarketing are pretty strict here. I did report the one call I got and I got a follow-up email a few weeks later explaining what had happened (the company doing the marketing had experienced a technical glitch [1]). [1] https://nixnamnden.se/2020/10/20-196-20-197-20-198-20-199-20-200-20-201-20-202-20-203-20-204-20-205-20-206 https://nixnamnden.se/2020/10/20-196-20-197-20-198-20-199-20...

chimeracoder 4y ago

> Do you get a lot of scam calls? In the US this is a problem The US is also a large and attractive target, because the population is large and the setup costs of a phone scam can be amortized across a massive group. Remember that scamming is a numbers game - they have to hit massive numbers of targets in order for it to pay off, because the probability of success is so low at each stage. Phone numbers within the US are compatible - there's no longer any meaningful difference between calling someone in Maine or Alaska - and it's easy to spoof area codes across state lines. So a scam that works in one state in the US can effectively be run in all 50 states with ~no change. Sweden is a country only slightly larger than New York City, and an effective scam would likely have to be run in Swedish (a language not spoken widely outside Sweden, and therefore not transposable to another scam) and it's trickier to spoof numbers across country lines convincingly (even within the EU) than it is across state lines in the US. This pattern plays out in a lot of ways, not just for Sweden. In general, smaller countries that speak languages not widely popular outside their home country will be less attractive targets (both for scams and for legitimate business) than countries which have a large potential market (target) size.

onetimeusename 4y ago
I was under the impression that most robo dialer's calls originated offshore with spoofed numbers that appear to be within your area code. It's possibly not though, like if someone is taking advantage of targeting a specific carrier's numbers from outside their network but I don't know. That might require the carrier to forward the calls. There are other exceptions for robo calls the callers could be using for themselves. If the robodialers are actually doing this inside of the US we could probably find who these people are. I imagine the majority of calls are made by a few scaled up calling operations. That's what previous arrests for this suggest. Although the technology is catching up and I have been getting fewer calls.
- chimeracoder 4y ago
  > I was under the impression that most robo dialer's calls originated offshore with spoofed numbers that appear to be within your area code. It's possibly not though, like if someone is taking advantage of targeting a specific carrier's numbers from outside their network but I don't know. Maybe this wasn't clear in my previous comment: the calls often originate from outside the country, yes, but the calls are spoofing US numbers, so there's no way for the recipient to know that the call is from another country. And the calls often try to match the local area code of the recipient. The point is that the scam scales very easily: if you can do it to any person in one state, you can do it to every person in every state (because calling all US phone numbers is essentially equivalent, and spoofing all states is equivalently easy).