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I lived in Europe and these calls were non-existent too. But I spoke Flemish (which is a dialect of Dutch). So the target area was VERY small. But my friend li
by WirelessGigabit 3y ago
I lived in Europe and these calls were non-existent too. But I spoke Flemish (which is a dialect of Dutch). So the target area was VERY small.
But my friend living in the South of Belgium, who spoke French, got plenty more.
If a scammer employs Flemish / Dutch speaking people they'll have a small target audience.
For Dutch you're looking at 25 million potential L1 targets [1].
However do that for French and all of the sudden you have about 80 million L1 potential targets [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
- hyperman1 3y agoJust as you, I live in Flanders. I get calls in English, French, even Spanish. Sometimes even in Dutch. In my experience, the English and Dutch speakers hate French, while the French and Spanish speakers hate Dutch. So you choose whatever they hate most and start asking about their favorite brand of toothpicks or whatever untill they fold. Double the fun when they find someone else speaking your language, at which point you switch to another language. Or go to pig latin.
- Semaphor 3y agoGermany, so decently big market. For a short time (a few months after the FB leak which included my phone number), I’d get those robot (literally, old-school automated messages) scam calls from "Interpol" about needing my passport. That lasted for a few weeks, maybe 8 or so calls. No scam calls before that, none since. The number has been the same since about 2002 when I got my first phone.