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France to ban unsolicited telemarketing calls
- amelius 2mo agoAnd what about those marketing people who approach you on the streets? Can we make that illegal too? And the people going from door to door?
- riffraff 2mo agoHow many door to door salesman do you encounter? Where do you live, if you can share? I haven't seen one in decades, and even then it was usually some pamphlets or books to support a cause or the other. On the phone (Italy), OTOH, I used to get daily scam call to buy "Amazon stocks" or change utility providers or install water filters. That seems to have massively faded out due to new regulations tho.
- lifestyleguru 2mo agoJehovah's Witnesses, across Europe, still even nowadays. Some other minor religious sects targeting elderly, usually offering care or attention followed by vicious takeover of real estate. Only because you have not been profiled as lone and vulnerable, doesn't mean the practice doesn't exist:)
- 72deluxe 2mo agoI know JWs go door to door but I don't think they sell anything nor do they ask for donations - all their stuff is free? To qualify as a salesman you'd have to be selling something, surely? My local C of E cathedral sent out a mailshot during COVID asking for donations with a range from £50 - £1000 options on the card (yes, really). I've never had anything like that from JWs. I get visits from the local air ambulance team looking for donations but I'd classify them as a charity, not a salesman. Even though the person is under contract (employed) to do the task of going door to door, it would be a charitable engagement and not a sale. I asked the last guy if he got commission - he said no.
- lifestyleguru 2mo agoDON'T APPROACH ME WITH YOUR RELIGION. PERIOD.
- 72deluxe 2mo agoI understand the sentiment but I don't understand why you're shouting a response at me; I was trying to highlight the difference between charities and salesmen. I think your issue is with religion, not sales people, which is what this article is about.
- amelius 2mo agoNo, you cannot hide behind "but I'm not selling anything". Because then a marketing person could say "but I'm only trying to make you aware of $PRODUCT; I'm not trying to sell it!"
- 72deluxe 2mo agoYes of course. But I was saying of the people I've had at my door, only some have been trying to sell things, which is what a "salesman" is. The guy from the local baptist church gave me a some book about being saved by Jesus (it had instructions on how to pray I think? dunno threw it away) but he didn't ask me for any money. By contrast, the Lithuanian girl who was trying to sell religious books (no idea who they were - some encyclopedias? it was very odd) was trying to sell them to me (nice girl, had come to this country and was living in a dorm? was confused why UK taps had hot/cold separately instead of a combined tap). The guys scamming me about a roof repair were definitely not doing it free. Nor were the guys trying to get me to switch internet provider, nor the guy offering me window replacement and double glazing, nor the woman selling me "lucky lavender", nor the guy selling sponges and cleaning products for tiny amounts of change. That's what I was saying - people who ask for money or donations are salesmen. People who don't, aren't. Nuisance religious callers and general unsolicited visitors is another topic. The article is about sales calls, not general nuisances.
- petepete 2mo agoI get several a year (UK). So far in 2026, I've had: * Jehovah's Witnesses * people offering to steam clean my roof/drive * the local Fibre company trying to sign me up. * well known scammers who claim to be on some kind of prison release scheme selling overpriced kitchen/household tat
- simiones 2mo agoI'm pretty sure that would fall under freedom of religion rights, and it couldn't be banned. Especially as proselytizing is a well known and well established religious practice.
- lifestyleguru 2mo agoDon't conduct your religious practices onto me please.
- simiones 2mo agoI'm personally atheistic, and thus have no religious practices whatsoever. However, just like it's legal to build churches, to ring church bells, to wear visible religious imagery, it's also legal and highly protected to talk to others, even strangers, about your religious beliefs (or lack thereof).
- amelius 2mo agoHow did it work out for the pastafarians?
- simiones 2mo agoNot sure if they tried to do this in the UK, which I believe has very different standards to the USA for what it means for something to be a legitimate religious practice. In the USA I believe they actually succeeded in obtaining various religious exemptions, such as wearing a collander on their head in driver's license photos.
- Telaneo 2mo agoProbably a bit more than one per year. Mostly painters telling me I need to repaint. Norway.
- Macha 2mo agoIreland, small town, average reputation housing estate: 1-2 per week. Primarily charities, ISPs and energy companies
- asdfsa32 2mo agoWhat other kind of infantilizing laws do you purpose? Perhaps they should also make it illegal for people to interact with you if you find unpleasant? Ban small talk at checkouts?
- lifestyleguru 2mo agoBan "give a tip", "donate to charity", and "buy insurance" in checkout and payment screens, yes please.
- Ekaros 2mo agoSounds good. I see no reason why not treat all that with same distaste as say sexual harassment.
- msh 2mo agoIn my country door to door sales are illegal.
- Telaneo 2mo agoYes please!
- Raed667 2mo agoThe service that was managing this before (Bloctel) was just hacked https://frenchbreaches.com/alertes/bloctel-mshxaq0ysyd27ca7f6 https://frenchbreaches.com/alertes/bloctel-mshxaq0ysyd27ca7f...
- xenator 2mo agoArticle is not clear. Does this law blocks B2B calls? If so then it can cause damage to the business.
- alex95 2mo ago"After a joint call by 11 consumer groups" - going to guess its B2C given "consumer groups".
- docdeek 2mo agoA business can call another business it there’s an existing relationship. This means you can introduce an upgrade, a new product line, or something unrelated to their current contract - but the contract needs to be there first. Other than that, the business needs the call receipient to opt in. They can dop this on a webform, a physical form, or by initiating the contact and, say, leaving a message for the vendor asking to be called back. It means the business needs to concetrate on avenues other than cold calling for getting themselves in front of a prospect.
- skinfaxi 2mo agoIf you do a B2B call to someone's personal device, you should be arrested, straight to jail.
- ZeWaren 2mo agoThe previous system never blocked scams because scammers didn't bother to check if your phone number was in the block-list before calling you. That new law is not going to change the number of spam calls most people will get, as they're not from properly registered businesses.
- stymaar 2mo agoIt's not about scams, it's about commercial telemarketing calls. Scams have been heavily hit in January when the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers (it's not an actual hard block, but unauthenticated calls will be market as "private number" which are ignored by most people already). There will always be scammers who register an actual phone number to run their scams, but this rule will at least stop the constant phone harassment that made everyone unplug their landline phone.
- mcv 2mo ago> the French regulator mandated the telcos to implement a complete block of spoofed phone numbers That is really great. I've had a lot of trouble with calls from spoofed numbers a couple of years ago (it ended when I installed a scam blacker on my phone), and when I looked into it at that time, my impression was that phone companies couldn't block spoofed numbers. On the other hand, if the scam blocking app can block them, there clearly must be some way to detect them. Phone companies need to do a better job protecting their customers against this abuse.
- Telaneo 2mo agoThe problem with spoofing is that there are legitimate uses of it. It's probably solvable by only allowing spoofing of numbers you actually own (so if a hospital has 20 phone lines, they can spoof their publicly posted phone number, but random spammers can't spoof your neighbour's phone number). The fact that the phone companies haven't done this or much else yet goes to show how little they care.
- 2mo ago
- amberjack 2mo agoThis seems so much of a no-brainer to me due to scammy calls to elderly and pure time loss responding to calls it is interesting not much has been done about it in other countries. I guess the telemarketers have a good lobby.
- janci 2mo agoIn my experience, GDPR works wonders here. After saying I do not wish my personal information to be processed and revoke any consents a few times I do not receive these calls anymore.
- Kon5ole 2mo agoGreat idea! Telemarketers have ruined the phone network for me. I haven't answered an unknown call for the past 10 years, which sometimes means I miss important ones. 99.9% of all calls are an attempt to get money, and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage. A ban is the right idea but I wonder how they can handle it, logistically. I think there needs to be a technical solution. A national "whitelist", where hospitals, doctors, utility companies and such can register to get their numbers whitelisted perhaps, combined with a setting on phones that block any non-whitelist number. Each country could maintain their own whitelists, and corrupt nations selling whitelist status to scammers would get blocked in any other country at least.
- baby 2mo agoI think most legitimate businesses have moved away from phone calls for exactly this reason. In lots of countries they use whatsapp
- LeBit 2mo agoThe whitelist managed by the government is not a bad idea. I’ve been thinking how to turn the table so that you could allow only certain parties to reach you if you allowed them to (say you are waiting for a call from the auto repair shop). I like the idea of a whitelist. But there needs to be a way for you to also manage that white list so that you can allow that repair shop to call you in the next few weeks.
- left-struck 2mo agoHave you tried call screening? I know for sure apple phones can do this but I believe some android phones can too? For me, all unknown calls are screened. Which means if someone who’s not in my contacts calls me, they get some automatic voice saying something like “this is apple screen calling, please let me know who you are and why you are calling” The person calling then either hangs up or says something, if they say something I can see the live transcription and answer the call immediately if it’s important. It’s been incredibly effective. I’ve been using it for a couple of years now with no complaints from anyone for not being able to reach me, and not once have I answered a scam call during that period. I’ve had a few situations similar to what you describe, some service I’m using like a doctor, realestate agent etc called me and I immediately recognised who they are and why they are calling and answered.
- ChrisRR 2mo agoI suspect the data may be misleading. Unsolicited sales calls from genuine businesses are not the same as spam/scam calls
- Raed667 2mo agoi don't want either, unless you're calling about a legitimate transaction i initiated, don't ever call me unsolicited
- shakna 2mo agoSpam is generally defined as "unwanted and/or unsolicited communication". Which I'm pretty sure an unsolicited sales call, from a genuine business, still is.
- williamdclt 2mo agonot the same as scam, but how is it not spam?
- AussieWog93 2mo agoI run a few small businesses and quite regularly get unsolicited emails/calls. There's absolutely a real, qualitative difference between contact from a real human being who respects everyone's time and has done actual research, and someone who is just playing the numbers game and blasting as many people as they can (regardless of how "warm" the leads are). It's a bit of a spectrum, but if someone has taken the time to handwrite and research an email or call, I'll at least try to give them the courtesy of a response.
- Telaneo 2mo agoThe pictures are identical.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- jamesnorden 2mo agoThey are to me.
- Cider9986 2mo agoThe problem is Phone numbers. No Band-Aids will fix them.
- Gigachad 2mo agoThere have actually been a number of band aids which have been fixing it. A few years ago I used to receive multiple malicious text messages and phone calls a day, then the Aus government cracked down on verification requirements for senders and I get zero. I still get constant unsolicited sales calls but these are technically legal.
- dredmorbius 2mo agoExplain, please.
- Cider9986 2mo agoThey are long-term identifiers that are repeated across services so leaks are detrimental and it's easy to spam them. Not even mentioning the terrible security of the cellular network (ss7) and terrible carrier security (sim swapping). It's caused probably hundreds of millions in crypto losses and billions in fraud.
- SpecialistK 2mo agoAre calls originating in France a major source of these unsolicited calls? According to the article, a lot of the calls are coming from Morocco, outside of their jurisdiction. I'm in North America and most of the calls I get are using local numbers, often spoofed from (I suspect) South and South East Asia. Good luck enforcing Canadian or American law in literal slave camps on the China-Myanmar border.
- jplrssn 2mo agoIs there a technical reason why phone numbers would be easier to spoof in North America than other places? Anecdotally I’ve not heard as much about it being a problem in other places such as the UK.
- kotaKat 2mo agoI'd say the deregulation of the telephone industry in America, breaking up the baby Bells, etc would have probably been the biggest hand. We broke everything up and let any old player enter the telco world over here which broke the entire sanctity of the security of the telephone network.
- SpecialistK 2mo agoI'm not sure if that's the whole story, because I speak from a Canadian perspective where telecom ownership is quite protectionist. And these spoofed numbers are almost always local. I guess bad-faith US telcos could allow spoofing Canadian NANP numbers...
- nephihaha 2mo agoIt is possible to "spoof" numbers in the UK. I've seen it. Calls from outside the UK masquerading as UK numbers. They tend to use London numbers which is the main giveaway.
- maeln 2mo agoSo, this is specifically for telemarketing call, not scam call. In the context of telemarketing, it doesn't matter that the company call center is outsourced in other country. The company who contracted them are in France, trying to sell their business in France, they are responsible. So if you get a telemarketing call from RandoCallCenterCo S.A trying to sell you on BusinessABC Ltd., they have been contracted by said company to do so and BusinessABC Ltd. will be on the hook.
- thibaut_barrere 2mo agoRelated: https://saracroche.org/ https://saracroche.org/
- Vosporos 2mo agoThis app has saved my mental health
- wiether 2mo agoI was about to talk about it for my fellow citizens ; clearly an awesome app! Fun fact, Bloctel, the service that was supposed to allow us to ask not to be harassed, leaked last week... https://www.universfreebox.com/article/596529/piratage-de-bloctel-juste-avant-son-arret-jusqua-3-millions-de-numeros-de-telephone-auraient-fuite https://www.universfreebox.com/article/596529/piratage-de-bl...
- sambf 2mo agoAlternative for the power-users: https://github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker https://github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker
- ttoinou 2mo agoIn the last 2-3 years, my impression is that most french numbers receive daily unsolicited phone calls. In 2026 they even started sending scammy “missing delivery” text message with your real name printed on an attached MMS picture (on a parcel to deliver), making it even more real. Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
- Vosporos 2mo ago#FranceFuite
- tuetuopay 2mo agoYup, having a French number is unbearable without automatic blacklist apps. I definitely notice it when it breaks after an iOS update, is start getting multiple calls a day. For any french here with an iPhone: Begone works great and has community lists for spam numbers. The SMS are getting out of hand too, they send you a pre-recorded MP3 in addition to the picture too. At least they don't have enough information to know I don't have a letterbox. > Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France Yeah, more and more French people are getting annoyed at it, esp. when companies always say "no worries no payment info leaked". I don't care, I can change my credit card but I can't change my personal informations. And literally last week it's Bloctel that leaked! It's the government managed list of phone numbers that don't want to receive telemearketing calls, where anyone can add its own number to be excluded. Great idea on paper, goldmine of a data leak.
- PunchyHamster 2mo ago> goldmine of a data leak. It's a number out of not so big pool of numbers. Spam caller can iterate every number in the country in a month
- tuetuopay 2mo agoIt's worth quite a bit: the numbers on that list are live, with people smart enough to care, etc. Random numbers are worthless.
- ccakes 2mo agoAutomatic filtering on modern iOS has been a game changer here. Assume Android has something similar, but I can't speak highly enough of that one feature
- dd8601fn 2mo agoIf only it didn’t show the missed call pip for filtered calls.
- Schiendelman 2mo agoI found a good solution for that - just remove the "phone" app from the home screen.
- dd8601fn 2mo agoYeah… I’m an old. I still make and receive phone calls pretty regularly.
- Schiendelman 2mo agoI do too. You don't need to have the phone app on your home screen to do either of those.
- erikprotagonist 2mo agoI use SpamBlocker for filtering (available on F-Droid) to block calls, and with at least newish Samsung there is an option to hide blocked calls in the menu of the phone app. I've got it configured to block on a country basis, with previous calls and contacts as a whitelist - that works for me.
- dools 2mo agoThe only effective way to police this is to make the telco accountable and have a reporting system. Someone is terminating the calls and getting paid for doing it.
- medlazik 2mo agoCurrent law forces them to use known phone number ranges and to my surprise they respect it. I'm using an app that blocks those ranges, I receive about 3 unsolicited calls per day they're all blocked. We even have a phone provider that can block them for you. I fear the ban will just make them use random numbers we can't block
- mytailorisrich 2mo agoAnother distraction, probably useless in practice, and in typical French government fashion they carved out a number of exceptions including to sell you subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, because...
- suslik 2mo ago"God! I only asked her to be a hooker. It's not like I wanted her to work in telesales". I stopped picking up unsolicited unknown calls perhaps a decade ago, and nothing was lost. It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'. It would be great to have a tech solution for this, really, but I doubt printing another law is going to help with the scammier side of this market.
- flyingshelf 2mo agoIt's funny and sad to see polite people run into scammers. I witnessed to a young man being almost unable to keep saying "no" for the 20th time to an insistent seller on a beach. When it happens to me, they're met with silence or "GTFO" after the 3rd question. I am impolite.
- Telaneo 2mo agoTo me it's just sad. Scammers and pushy sellers aren't acting in good faith, but polite people seem to be unable to recognise this, or unwilling to change their modus operandi in spite of it. Like, if you know the person in front of you is a knobhead who wants nothing more than for you to part with your money in exchange for nothing, why are you even entertaining the idea of treating them with even a sliver of respect? Add in the fact that the person on the other end isn't even a human (it's not a human spam calling you; at best it's an automated call which get dumped on a human when it connects), and the whole thing gets even more absurd.
- Telaneo 2mo ago> It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'. Assuming you can get access to their phone, only allowing calls from saved numbers would probably be the best solution, assuming she doesn't get random calls from hospitals and the like. If she's still using a landline though, that's a tough one to solve.
- suslik 2mo ago
- Highbrow 2mo agoA welcoming move. I am from India and I use Truecaller premium to filter calls. It has become a big head-ache, making us to miss important calls
- flyingshelf 2mo agoEssentially useless. My country also banned them and has a "do not call" registry, doesn't stop scammers from calling my phone non-stop. Also legally speaking all you need is "Check this box if you don't want spam" and the floodgates are open, legally. You need telco-level detection and blocking. If a cellphone number makes 1000 calls today maybe it's not a real cellphone, is it. Block the calls.
- nexus6 2mo agoAt least it gives a legal framework for prosecution.
- ascari 2mo agoExactly, I think all these regulations in the Europe fail to understand the enforceability of these, any legitimate business won't be making unsolicited calls already. For instance, I weekly get unsolicited calls from a legit recruitment agency in the UK, never ever shared my data with them, they don't even email but directly call in absurd times. I requested removal of my data after months of ignored calls but they kept calling still, reported to ICO but no luck either. I'm 30+ and was trying to buy some wine yesterday, and was IDed and i'm clearly well over 18 yet they had to take the bottle back as I didn't carry my ID with me. Essentially the same thing with pubs/bars etc, you're clearly over 18 but there is a weird power trip yet in some raves/clubs you still see under 18s being let in.
- thrance 2mo agoThis law is especially targeted at legit businesses... It's already illegal for scammers to call. And I don't think something being hard to enforce is reason enough to not do anything about it. If we truly care about something, we can always find a way.
- ValentinPearce 2mo agoIn France the CNIL is pretty good at enforcing regulation IIRC. And for any small to medium company, the fine should be enough of a deterrent. I don't think companies big enough to just shrug the fine away resort to much telemarketing here.
- mcv 2mo agoThat's great. Netherland banned them a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I still receive them. Sometimes a lot. A year or two ago, I received calls almost every week from a major TV/internet provider (Ziggo-Vodafone; total crooks). I told them not to call me again, I complained to the regulator, but as far as I can tell, nothing was ever done about it. So banning it is great, but you still need to enforce that law.
- Xmd5a 2mo ago>Sometimes a lot. A year or two ago, I received calls almost every week 4-5 a day here.
- mcv 2mo agoFrom the same company? That's crazy. You'd think they'd get the message, but they're really stubborn. Most Dutch companies seem to obey the rules, but this one (and it's a big one) clearly does not. I still don't understand why they weren't fined into oblivion.
- Fnoord 2mo agoWere you a former customer of Vodafone-Ziggo? If yes, did you delete your account?
- erremerre 2mo agoAt least most of the Spanish one can be banned by blocklisting a whole company. which is what I did following a guide I found, and have reduced my Spam calls from 2 per day, to 3 per year. However, the only way to solve this I believe is that you could once you get an unsolicited call to press a combination like ##01, and automatically this is passed to an agency that deals to punish whoever is behind the call in real time. At least if they call from a national number.
- realmoravec 2mo agoHas anyone tried https://www.donotcall.gov/ https://www.donotcall.gov/? curious, if folks have other lpts. These calls when they happen are relentless.
- nf-x 2mo agosome of the third-party apps can show if a number is potentially a spam or a business. it's handy when your phone number is listed in the business directory to avoid those annoying calls.
- jambalaya8 2mo agoI wonder how this will affect their economy and unemployment rate?
- jambalaya8 2mo agoInteresting someone voted this down when literally I was asking how it will affect unemployment rates, not suggesting I am a fan of robocalls and telemarketing. Guess I was not being clear enough that was not a rhetorical question or some sort of pleading for unsolicited calls. Note, not posting to complain about the vote down but to be more clear.
- collabs 2mo agoMy pet peeve is that a full class A attestation is still not a requirement in 2026. The US FCC won't do it. I have no hope from the current administration. However, perhaps France is in a unique position to implement this. The idea is that all calls that have a domestic caller ID will be required to have full class A attestation and all carriers will be required by law to block any calls that do not have such full attestation. Any carrier that attests phone numbers that it is not supposed to should get huge fines and criminal charges. This is my dream for what all Telecoms in the world should do, hopefully beginning with France. This requires broad support within the country and a firm deadline so companies don't shrug it off until the last moment and then demand an extension.
- rr808 2mo agoMe too. The problem is now I trust Meta with much of this instead of the FCC which is awkward for me. I use on Messenger and Whatsapp much more often for voice calls, and you know exactly who is calling.
- bocytron 2mo agoNote that in France, telemarketing calls are already required to use specific number prefixes. This is already very useful: you can immediately tell whether a call is from a telemarketer just by looking at the number prefix.
- flgggd 2mo ago> Note that in France, telemarketing calls are already required to use specific number prefixes. This is already very useful: you can immediately tell whether a call is from a telemarketer just by looking at the number prefix. This is useful only for the few who care enough to operate legally. I activated a white list mode that prevents any call from a number that isn't in my current phone book because there's a constant flood of calls from regular mobile numbers (prefixed 06), most likely from spoofing. The phone network is unbearable in France without a white list mode.
- richarme 2mo agoIn my personal experience basically all spam calls in France come from a fixed set of number prefixes. [0] So phone companies could just offer to block those prefixes - it would be a trivial solution to the problem. But it's not an option [1], so either they make good money from those calls, or there's some other hurdle or legal issue. Either way the new law could (in addition to making it illegal for companies to make spam calls) also simply have mandated that network operators block the known ones. Too bad. [0] https://lemagdelaconso.ouest-france.fr/dossier-2418-demarchage-telephonique-12-numeros-bloquer-urgence.html https://lemagdelaconso.ouest-france.fr/dossier-2418-demarcha... [1] https://communaute.orange.fr/t5/mon-telephone-par-internet-et/comment-bloquer-les-4-premiers-chiffres-des-num%C3%A9ros-de/td-p/3014216 https://communaute.orange.fr/t5/mon-telephone-par-internet-e...
- daneel_w 2mo agoNo, that's a bad idea. There's no hurdle or legal issue, and money isn't behind it either. Those "prefixes" (area codes) are all the same segments of this or that national numbering plan that are also allocated by legitimate businesses both for placing legitimate outbound calls to their customers and for numbers that connect e.g. switchboards/IVRs to serve customers who are calling in.
- dredmorbius 2mo agoIf a specific region (or more likely: operators within it) are responsible for the vast majority of abusive traffic, then absolutely they should bear the consequences of this. Yes, there's collateral damage, but those negatively affected by being unable to make legitimate calls should be a prime lobby for effective egress control from their respective operators and regulators. Pain exists for a reason. It's negative feedback.
- daneel_w 2mo agoThe ones to really bear the consequences are legitimate businesses and the customers of these businesses. It sounds like your desire to see offenders punished, instead of the problem actually being solved with the help of functional regulations, makes you incapable of seeing the wider picture.
- maelito 2mo agoActually, people that installed the open-source Saracroche app don't really have this problem anymore. Credits for this incredible independent app, available on third-party stores. Even better, the dev has added OpenStreetMap information about legit enterprises calling you. https://saracroche.org https://saracroche.org (of course its better to forbid them)
- matsemann 2mo agoNorway has the same law. I get no spam calls like this from Norway. What I do get is spam calls from abroad. Often with a spoofed Norwegian number. Why can't operators block this? I know call centers and various things need to "spoof" a number they own, and when I myself call from abroad my Norwegian number will come from outside Norway. But why can't they attest the numbers somehow? Owner of +47 XXXXXXX is currently not abroad. So why allow someone from the other side of the world to call me pretending to come from that number? Why does the Norwegian operators allow that?
- AnssiH 2mo agoIt is technically possible, here in Finland such blocking (i.e. all inbound international calls with Finnish caller ID, except for roaming) has been obligatory for a few years now (https://traficom.fi/en/news/obligations-regulation-come-effect-200000-scam-calls-are-prevented-day https://traficom.fi/en/news/obligations-regulation-come-effe...).
- Pinus 2mo agoSomething similar is in place in Sweden. For landline numbers, it is of course easy. A number with, say, a Stockholm area code is not suddenly going to be in Nigeria. For mobiles it is trickier, because a Swedish mobile may very well be in Nigeria. Some additional database look-ups had to be added to the already rubegoldbergesque contraption that handles mobile phone calls.
- realusername 2mo agoIt's even worse than that, I sometimes get calls from phone prefixes which do not even exist in the world. They don't even check that the number can exist.
- londons_explore 2mo agoPhones could be set to "allow incoming calls from contacts only" by default. Then a spammer has to persuade you to add them to contacts before they spam you
- altern8 2mo agoUsing the web is basically impossible without an ad blocker, and having a phone is basically impossible without a call blocker. Spam has taken over every form of communication, but luckily there are easy ways to stop it. I use AdGuard as ad blocker, blocks ads as a browser extension and ads on websites and apps as a mobile app. For telemarketers I use Should I Answer, it works GREAT. Never ever receive a single call from a telemarketer, they all get blocked automatically.
- sylware 2mo agoHasn't been already the case for a while now? Oo (and I am french)
- rdmuser 2mo agoI had a bit of a funny situation happen where putting myself on the do not call list stopped calls from more reputable sources but also caused an even bigger increase in sketchy calls. I switched to using a free service tied to my phone company that makes callers enter a number before being forwarded. Turns out nearly 100% of these remaining calls were automated and got dropped. Turns out sometimes you need two fences to make good neighbors.
- jstummbillig 2mo agoOr: How to transfer less money from old to young people. (I am jesting. Fuck telemarketing.)
- pythonRon 2mo agoLet's hope other countries follow suit. Next, let's go after the email spammers! YES!
- nlehuen 2mo agoFrench video explaining how one particular telemarketing scam works in France: https://youtu.be/1HoU17dIEos?is=8giBMS_TRJEvmzM3 https://youtu.be/1HoU17dIEos?is=8giBMS_TRJEvmzM3 I'm really curious to see what impact the new law will have on this scourge.
- mkbkn 2mo agoAs soon as I realise it's a spam call, I just put myself on mute and let the spammer blabber himself/herself. They get frustrated and never call me again.
- monegator 2mo agoTelemarketers here have been banned in various ways for i don't know... ten times? in the last ten years. As long as service providers are not held accountable for, and they let the scammers spoof the caller ID, the problem will not be solved __then you start investigating, and see where these call centers come from and who they are tied with..__
- josefrichter 2mo agoSurprised it’s not banned there yet. It’s banned in Czechia, so I was expecting it to be the same across the whole EU.
- mattrighetti 2mo agoI think Italy did something similar a couple of years ago. You would need to put your number in a special register to opt-out of these calls. I don't know if this ever worked or not, but giving your number to government feels odd to me so I never signed up. It's a lot more simple to just outright block unknown callers.
- daneel_w 2mo agoSweden has such a system*, and a couple of related laws, since the early 2000s. In my personal experience it works very well here, and I've never heard friends or acquaintances complain either about getting unsolicited calls despite having signed up on the list. An identical system would of course not perform equally in any other country, depending on local "telephone culture" and general moralities. * https://nixtelefon.org/ https://nixtelefon.org/
- timoth3y 2mo agoThis is a great move by France, but most of the rest of the world does not suffer from the telemarketing scam hell that Americans do. I am a US citizen living overseas. I have a US cell number that is only used for 2FA for US financial institutions. No one else has that number. I get more scam calls every day on that number than I do in a year on my local number. It's crazy. Most of the world has solved the worst of the problem by simply not allowing caller-ID spoofing and by blocking bad actors the way that ISPs block email coming from known bad IPs. The US already has the STIR/SHAKEN authentication protocols, but the telcos seem to feel no financial or regulatory pressure to clamp down on all the sketchy intermediate carriers the scammers use to bypass them. Maybe it's America's love of "market-based solutions" that prevents of from solving this problem the way everyone else has? Rather then actually solve the problem via regulation, the US prefers to turn it into business opportunities to make the situation suck slightly less by letting the telcos sell subscriptions to moderately effective blocking programs and an creating an ecosystem of moderately effective apps.
- paulluuk 2mo ago> Most of the world has solved the worst of the problem by simply not allowing caller-ID spoofing and by blocking bad actors I live in the Netherlands, and I get several spoofed crypto-scam calls every day. I have also stopped picking up the phone for numbers I don't recognize. My own telephone number has been used to call others for a while, so I would get tons of "sorry I was busy, what did you call about?" return calls from random people when clearly I had not called them at all. As far as I know, the only reason spoofing is even possible, is so that call centers in other countries can pretend to be calling from a local number, which.. why is that even a feature? This feels very much like an example of "this should be run by the government" rather than letting this be run by companies.
- account42 2mo agoI'm curious, is that a landline or a mobile number? Because I have two mobile numbers the country to the right of you and have gotten perhaps one marketing/scam call in the last decade. And those numbers have been used for 2FA for plenty of websites so surely must have leaked by now.
- rcbdev 2mo agoI never knew that this is not illegal everywhere. In Austria, this has been illegal for as long as I can think.
- LelouBil 2mo agoLiving in France, right now the only kind of spam calls I am getting are prerecorded voice loops. I admit they are done pretty well, it took 2-3 different calls (accross months) for me to notice I wasn't talking to a real person !
- gunalx 2mo agoNever going to fix the inherent problem og spam calls though. Even if all would follow the ban (witch they wont as i get frequent calls and am on a legally dont call list) thee is the inherent problem of foreign spammers also often masquerading as local numbers. If noe positive thing the twlecompanies would het it å bit easier filtrering and the amount would be less.
- dakial1 2mo agoIn Brazil no one uses common phone lines anymore because, in part, of the telemarketers and scams calls. Most people I know enable “silence unknown callers” and use almost exclusively Whatsapp for communication. The government tried to control this with an official (no call list) that is usually ignored by companies who use third parties and disposable mobile numbers to do their dirty work. Telcos have the power to control that but they are usually an internal mess and this is low in their priority list as they consider the voice calls a lost battleground.
- marcosdumay 2mo agoANATEL says we will have authenticated numbers by 2028. After that, it's a matter of pressuring the government to punish the people doing the undesired calls. The second implementation (AFAIK, we are in the 3rd now) of that no-call list was quite successful in pressuring companies. It can be done.
- tlogan 2mo agoThe main problem and challenge with all these regulations is enforcement. How are they actually going to enforce them? The U.S. already has very strict rules against unsolicited calls, yet I still get around 20 spam calls a day saying things like "press 2 to be connected" or offering some "$64K loan." At the same time, I have not received a single unsolicited call from a reputable company. The same is true for text messages. In 2023, the U.S. introduced stricter regulations, and companies like Twilio responded with very strict anti-spam rules. The rules are now so restrictive that we are forced to stopped using Twilio for text important notification to our my own team. Yet I still receive dozens of spam text messages every week. So the question is whether the regulations can actually be enforced against the people who are already ignoring them.
- Lvl999Noob 2mo agoHave an LLM listen in on all the calls and automatically flag unsolicited calls?
- ornornor 2mo agoThat’s a terrible idea. Just think about privacy, pollution, cost.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- tremon 2mo ago> I have not received a single unsolicited call from a reputable company. Yet you receive 20 spam calls a day through a known company, namely your phone provider. The way to solve this is to forcibly draft the providers into this; for example: any time you receive a spam call, you can dial a special *# number after hanging up. This message will have the effect of crediting $5 on your next phone bill, and allows the provider to recoup that loss from the originating provider, etc, all the way to the caller itself. The first company in the chain not cooperating in this scheme is out $5 per spam call through their network. Of course, something like this needs the usual protection against abuse, but that's equally manageable.
- dragg87 2mo agoI don't know about france, but in Italy the phone network is pretty much dead except for spam calls. No one uses it anymore.
- sschueller 2mo agoI hope they can make it work We have a ban on telemarketing calls regarding insurance in Switzerland. But we still get them. So what happens is that insurance agents (which are required to be licensed) don't call them selves. Instead they use 3rd party call centers outside the country which make the calls. They "warmup" the clients to get a meeting in which the agent then in a visit can make the sale. For law enforcement to punish these people and revoke their licenses they would need to do costly sting operation which they can only do so much.
- greggoB 2mo agoThis sounds like the basis of a scam involving a company called Clark that I had the displeasure of dealing with in the past. From what I understand, they had/have an operation running in Spain, the purpose of which is to get people signed up for insurance-based pillar 3a products. I don't know what has happened with this subsequently.
- reaperducer 2mo agoHow is this possible? We have been chided over and over and over again on HN by the fine citizens of the E.U. that unsolicited telemarketing calls are purely an American problem, are completely unheard of in Europe, and that this never happens in "civilized" nations with "a functioning legal system."
- 6r17 2mo agoSame announcement every year for the past 10 years and same shit.
- somid3 2mo agoThe US should do the same!
- karim79 2mo agoI just don't answer calls if I don't recognise the number, and especially if it's from an "unknown caller". If someone has my number, they can text me. If they know who I am and who they are reaching then they probably have my email address as well. This shit needs to stop.
- kvam 2mo ago75k per call. CAC is about to go through the roof
- dredmorbius 2mo agoCAC?
- balderdash 2mo agotake a c-level position at a company and your cell phone (you work phone as well, but your personal non-work affiliated cell phone) will ring multiple times a day with sales people (recruiting firms, software companies, cleaning companies, consultants, financing or financial products etc.) because some asshole uploaded their address book so they could play some game or use some stupid app…
- brushfoot 2mo ago"Cold calls annoy me" is one angle, and from that perspective, sure. But "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is another angle. Because giant corporations may not need to make cold calls. It's the small bootstrapped startup that does. Hopefully lawmakers will include provisions for small businesses making well-researched calls. Because otherwise, this is just one more way of pulling up the ladder.
- faeyanpiraat 2mo agoYeah this is something which got on my radar as a potential way to get web development clients, like just call companies with kind of bad websites and see if they need new ones? This gotta be an outdated way to get business, but regardless of whether this would work on a small scale (havent tried yet) would this be considered spam aswell?
- nojvek 2mo agoLove it!
- Razengan 2mo agoHow was this not "banned" 50 years ago..
- charlieyu1 2mo agoProbably won’t work at all, the calls don’t even come inside the country
- p1dda 2mo agoWhy haven't politicians stopped this before? It has taken advantage of the elderly for decades yet the fucking, lowlife politicians has done NOTHING!
- victoriaeast 2mo agoIt’s crazy the amount of phone operator companies sell our data and numbers to those people. I really wish it would stop because scammers can also use it. So frustrating.
- dredmorbius 2mo agoA major problem is that the phone number space is densely populated. That is, of all possible numbers, a large fraction are actually assigned. This makes the act of randomly or sequentially dialing numbers tractable, as many of those attempts will reach an actual connection. This is known as wardialing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardialing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardialing>. In the United States (plus Canada and much of the Caribbean) , standard numbers are ten digits (three for area code, three for exchange, four for service number), which allows for 10 billion distinct numbers. Of these there are significant reserved blocks, but the total is still close to that. The total population is about 350 million, which means that there's roughly a 1:30 chance of a given dialed number connecting to an active account. Actual utilisation and namespace exhaustion are harder to suss out, though numbers are currently constrained, with several area codes being fully exhausted by 2028, and the full system lasting to about 2061. See: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbering_Resource_Utilization/Forecast_Report https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbering_Resource_Utilization...>. I see two ways around this. 1: Expand the namespace. By having vastly more potential identifiers than subscribers, wardialing succeeds far less often. The two principle problems with this idea are that a) once a given number is known it's vulnerable and b) the resulting numbers are far less memorizable. 2: Implement a caller-callee relationship. Effectively, a caller would have to authenticate to the callee when making a call, and only approved callers would be passed through. This is effectively the role an old-school receptionist would serve at a business, permitting only select calls through to a principal employee. Because of limitations with the existing phone network, the caller's number alone is a poor identifier. Some other challenge would be required. One option I've considered, which should be implementable with a VOIP service, would be to have individual "extensions" assigned to specific callers. A caller would dial the primary number, then be asked to enter an "extension", which would be restricted to the caller's originating number (so that different callers each have a unique assigned extension). The extension space would also have to be relatively large (to avoid random/sequential search), probably 10-100x the number of approved contacts at a minimum.[1] Previously-unknown callers might go through a preliminary vetting and be dropped to a voicemail box or (preferably) be requested to text their message, preferably in a brief, text-only format, say 40--80 characters or so, enough to identify the caller but not to drop a massive spam load. ________________________________ Notes: 1. If a typical person has 100-1,000 contacts, the "extension" space would be roughly 1,000 to 100,000 values, perhaps 3--5 digits.
- kristopolous 2mo agoIn the US, effectively 100% of the calls are criminals and scammers. I really don't understand. Isn't the government listening to all the phone calls? Wasn't that the disclosure like 2 decades ago. The very first time someone tries that dumb Yahoo security scam, the number should be automatically disconnected. I really don't get it
- p-e-w 2mo agoWhat benefits would the government (not the people) get from shutting down scammers? Scammers still pay taxes, and companies like Amazon that benefit from revenue obtained by scammers are major donors.
- kristopolous 2mo agoUh, it's a representative democracy... The government isn't some nebulous mythical gorgon, it's supposedly responsive and representative of the people's needs. Also I assure you, scammers aren't honestly filling out I-9s and W-4s adding up all the Western Union receipts. They're scamming the IRS as well
- p-e-w 2mo ago> Uh, it's a representative democracy Stating that doesn’t make it so. The US government doesn’t “represent” its people any more than the Chinese government does. Quite possibly less so.
- Telaneo 2mo ago> it's supposedly responsive and representative of the people's needs. It's damn near proven that the US representative branch doesn't give a shit about its electorate, within margin of error. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43281052 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43281052
- kristopolous 2mo ago...and it's our job to fix that... yours and mine.
- perarneng 2mo agoSpam calls killed telephony. The greed of phone companies allowed it to happen. They could have addressed the problem with technical measures, such as displaying the verified name of the caller—whether a person or a company. Showing only a phone number is not good enough.
- djfjfndmwpekdm 2mo ago[flagged]
- CurbStomper 2mo ago[dead]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 2mo agoIt's interesting that we all hate anonymous or spoofed calls over the phone but when it comes to the internet this is apparently the highest form of free protected speech. Why is this OK on one network but not another?
- Narishma 2mo agoNot sure what you mean. The equivalent on the internet is probably spam and scam emails and they're also typically blocked by your email provider.
- adolph 2mo agoI think this is an economic problem to solve, not a legal one. The telephone, like postal mail, email, http and a myriad of other protocols suffers from a lack of transaction costs. Why is there so much junk postal mail? Because the post office has discounted rates for such mail. Likewise, back when there were "long distance" tolls (nevermind the 10 cent SMS), there was less telemarketing because it was more expensive to operate call centers in each domain. I'm old enough to remember the sound of a phone ringing as evoking a happy "who could it be?" instead of "what scam is bothering me now?" Granted, nobody is going to rewrite all the old protocols to bolt on a payment clearinghouse. And legislation is weak against a large pool of relatively minor miscreants since it requires expensive prosecutorial time to enforce, either directly in criminal law or indirectly by regulating major gateways' compliance activities. To reduce unsolicited commercial contacts, people need to learn to accept expensive communication patterns. Currently we all already pay with the shadow work of curating contact lists, missing important calls because ringer off, deleting and marking as spam junk texts, etc. This shadow work could be reduced by accepting that a communique costs $X, with the knowledge that all the $X spent by others contacting oneself will offset one's own outbound costs.
- zhixingheyi2023 2mo ago[flagged]
- timcobb 2mo agoGeorgie W bush passed this for the USA but instead of enforcing it he did the Iraq war
- gwbas1c 2mo ago> On the other hand, France's new law has raised concerns in Morocco, where Employment Minister Younes Sekkouri, said in March that between 40,000 and 50,000 jobs were at risk in the country’s call centers. Sekkouri said the French market accounts for more than 80% of revenue in the sector. Never build a business around hassling other people. It's always at risk that laws will suddenly change and destroy your livelihood; because good leadership will realize that the best approach to handling you is to exclude you from the negotiating table and abruptly cut you off. This might come as a surprise to some people, but no one likes having their phone turned into a device that makes them listen to a commercial at random times throughout the day.
- everdrive 2mo agoIt sounds like they could just block calls from Morocco and cut off much of the problem.
- anonyme-honteux 2mo ago"Just block calls between France and Marocco" is a very racist proposal FYI there is at least 900k+ people in France either immigrant from Marocco or with an origin and a 100k+ people with french nationality or origin living in Marocco
- jiaosdjf 2mo agoThat's not racist it's simply a practical solution to spam calls coming from Morocco. It's completely irrelevant how many immigrants there are, they live in France now they can just dial out to Morocco and we ban inbound calls from Morocco.
- anonyme-honteux 2mo agoYes that's racist to divide one million families just the same of cruelty, and also quite stupid because that's not how capitalism work when there is a cheaper source of labor of a call center that speaks the right language in the right timezone, it will find its way. But racism and stupidity are usually good friends, so that checks out.
- phtrivier 2mo agoThis law is entirely meant for retirees with landlines (the only constituency that matters anyway in our gerontocracy.) In a sense, it's good to have someone try to tackle an actual problem (I know it's a pain to have to pick up the phone several times a day because of telemarketer. Especially when you're retired and have nothing to do all day than calling friends and discuss how you're going to spend the money from millennials salaries, share buybacks by the employers of millennials, and rents from the kids of millenials who'll never get a house, a job, or a retirement ever.) I suppose we'll have to wait a few decade for a government with a majority to pick up other small topics (climate change, debt wall, increasing inequalities, geopolitics, demographics, water shortages, draughts, food tension, and, oh, the general despair of the generation born after 2000.) But, okay, fine, in the meantime, getting rid of unsolicited phone calls is still _something_. It's a shame the law will not actually, hum, you knows, stop the unsolicited phone calls (they come from abroad and the callers could not care less), and so the retirees with a landline will not see a difference, and will do the natural thing, and vote for Trumpists even more than they expected to anyway. At least we don't get political ads on the phone...
- Jemm 2mo ago'unsolicited', means every contract or click will include accepting calls. Canada tried this years ago and it has barely made a dent. What we really need is a secure telephone system but our regulators refuse to consider doing so
- magnetic 2mo agoHere's what has worked for me (in the US), after feeling helpless for so long: Call Screening. I had no idea this existed on iOS (there may be an equivalent on Android), and I was very skeptical about it, but it has turned spam calls into a non-issue for me. https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/screen-and-block-calls-iphe4b3f7823/ios https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/screen-and-block-call...
- mike-cardwell 2mo agoI turned this on a few days ago. Looking good so far (UK)
- dredmorbius 2mo agoThere are features available for most phone types / plans, with varying levels of effectiveness. For old-school landline phones, look for "Smart Call Block" or a similar feature. These direct all unknown numbers to voicemail, with numbers in your contacts or allow list ringing directly. The feature is phone-specific, so you'll need a device which supports this capability. Unknown calls don't ring but are screened. Call block can be enabled or disabled if you're expecting a call from an unknown number. For smartphones, various options: - Numerous third-party call-blocking apps, such as NoMoRobo, Spamblocker, Saracroche, Sereniphone, and more. - OS-level Unknown-caller blocking. iOS offers a full version of this, see: <https://support.apple.com/en-mide/111106 https://support.apple.com/en-mide/111106>. Android, produced by the world's largest advertising agency, unsurprisingly doesn't have quite a satisfactory setting, though there are some approximations: <https://www.android.com/intl/en_uk/articles/stop-spam-calls-android/ https://www.android.com/intl/en_uk/articles/stop-spam-calls-...>. - Carrier-level call filtering. "Call Filter" on Verizon, "ScamShield" on T-Mobile, "ActiveArmor" on AT&T. Many Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) don't offer network-level spam call blocking. (This is companies such as Mint Mobile, Cricket, Boost, H20 Wireleess, Helium Mobile, etc., see: <https://bestmvno.com/mvnos/ https://bestmvno.com/mvnos/>.) Carrier-level filtering may work through an app, at the network level directly, or both. App support may be dependent on your specific device and OS. VOIP services should in theory afford the highest level of capabilities, though this depends on what your provider enables for you. Rather to my surprise, Xfinity/Comcast actually has one of the better network-level spam-blocking systems by description, "Voice Spam Blocker". This is a three-tiered risk-based system with complete rejection, direct-to-voicemail, and CAPTCHA challenge. (Presumably there's also a whitelist option.) See: <https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/change-spam-blocker-settings https://www.xfinity.com/support/articles/change-spam-blocker...>.
- ChrisArchitect 2mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192829
- konart 2mo agoI stopped getting spam calls in Russia after operators started blocking unsigned (unmarked?) calls. (all outgoing call from business and sole proprietors are required to be signed since September 2025). Not sure if this will hold for too long, because there is always a way, but still.
- cynicalpeace 2mo agoScams are bad. But cold-calling selling a genuine B2B product is a beautiful right-of-passage for anyone doing sales. Teaches you grit, rejection, tonality, relationship-building, and the elation of closing a sale all-in-one. It's also one of the few outbound marketing channels that isn't yet swallowed up by Meta/Google, and can be done by any scrappy teenager. Unpopular opinion here, I'm sure.
- nipunaeka89 2mo ago[flagged]
- nilamo 2mo agoThe USA did the same thing decades ago with the TCPA. It's not enforced, but it was still technically done.
- deaton 2mo agoAs nice as this would be, as an American (notably not a Frenchman), I find that 90% or more of the unsolicited calls I get are scammers, not telemarketing, so I don't know how much something like this would do. The US also has donotcall.gov, which no telemarketer bothers with.
- DivingForGold 2mo agoYou would think that of all the "great achievements" our current administration likes to boast about, they would put some serious TEETH into SPAM and telemarketing calls - - like prison time, and rabid enforcement. Everyone I know does not answer any live calls unless it's someone on their known "list", everything else is texting only. I discovered that when I respond to all unknown calls with "please text me", the spammers system won't take it and comes back with "error, invalid number" . . . then I know it's a scammer / spammer, and I block it. But blocking them is useless because the next time they use that fake number to try to call you it comes up blocked by you, so now they know they have a live connected number, and that encourages them to hammer away at you. I heard they get paid by how many numbers they dial out -- NOT by making a connection to a live human being. The fact that the Gov't cannot effectively block all these calls shows how insecure our phone system really is.
- jiaosdjf 2mo agoWouldn't it be cheaper to just block inbound calls from India?
- broadside1296 2mo agoIndians do not speak French.
- jiaosdjf 2mo agoNeither do French
- rtkwe 2mo agoSo many of the calls I get (in the US) have no mention of a company name and if you ask they hang up immediately AND they come from fake numbers so blocking or reporting is meaningless. Is the situation in France different? I don't think this would really do much for the situation in the US sadly unless we got reliable non spoofable caller ID.
- amoshebb 2mo agoThe correct solution is just giving people the option to charge people for phoning them. Say minimum wage is 12euro/hour, and declining a call takes about a minute of your attention, so this is worth at least 20cent. Instead of just "Answer" and "Hang-Up", there should be a gov't enforced "charge caller 20cent" option. This would have no impact on 'real' calls, nobody would charge their Mother and if someone is tacky enough to charge their GP or mechanic they could just be billed for it, and it would hardly be worth someone's trouble to try to steal a phone to call themselves to collect 20c, but it would totally ruin the economics of these spam calls. The same should exist for emails.
- grouchomarx 2mo agoimpressively convoluted. Spam calls are coming from all over the world using voip and prepaid sims. There aren't any accounts to "bill". Not to mention a whole new arena for fraud in spoofing regular numbers for micropayments
- tandr 2mo agoTo end up on your phone, VOIP have to terminate somewhere in local phone network. These networks need to stop accepting calls from shady places, or every call like this that they cannot charge back to original (or intermediary network) becomes a loss to them. And telecom companies do not like losses...
- IncreasePosts 2mo agoThere a story, perhaps apochraphal, from 15 years ago of a man setting up a premium rate line and getting paid whenever telemarketers called him. I believe the phone service said anyone doing that would be fined because you need to inform potential callers it's a premium rate number
- notorandit 2mo agoUseless. They tried already in Italy. Results? Unsolicited iphone calls from other EU country codes.
- a3_nm 2mo agoA perspective as I live in France: - There was already an easy statewide system to opt-out of telemarketing calls - Having always been on that system, I still got many scam calls that sound like telemarketing So it's great to have a ban rather than an opt-out, but this will not solve the issue of scam calls
- cpa 2mo agoBloctel ineffectiveness (the previous opt-out system) was cited as one of the reasons for moving to a ban. I was on this system too and used to get scam calls too (they would come in waves, like 3-4 calls in a week, nothing for a month, then another 3-4 calls). I stopped receiving calls from reputable companies (that probably abode by Bloctel's list) when I signed up though.
- travisgriggs 2mo agoAs long as message broadcasting remains cheap (in any form; phone, email, text, etc) it will go on. All modern media has evolved technically (and financially) to benefit the producer (the talker). All at the expense of the consumer (listener). Make outgoing bandwidth cost per instance and you’ll see a reduction/optimization of the production. When signal is free to produce, you end up with a lot of noise.
- farhanhubble 2mo agoRegulation is necessary but it won't be sufficient. In India they have the do not call registry but despite that I get twenty odd spam calls a day whenever my number is active. Personally I've benefited 100x more by using Truecaller but with time the app has been enshittified with weird features. That and my migration to iOS which has questionable support for Truecaller has made me the target of spammers again. Furthermore many telemarketers are now using Whatsapp bypassing such regulations.
- dbgrman 2mo agoKudos to France. But the problem isn't telemarketing calls. It's the wholesale grab-fest of phone numbers from every.damn.nook.and.crany of the US soil. Hospitals, Car dealers, dentists, vets, brokerages, title offices... literally EVERY one of them is leaking YOUR information to everyone in the world. within a week of closing a deal on my house i get a scam paper mail that almost looked legit asking me to pay $100 to get the title documents for my house. There aren't that many parties involved in the sale.. and its one of them (or all of them) broke the trust and bartered my information. nearly all of them are uploading their contact list to meta and google. THIS practice has to stop.
- gene91 2mo agoIn US, deed is public (grantor name, grantee name, property id). That’s probably how the scammers knew that you are involved in a recently recorded deed, and offered to send you a copy if you pay them.
- deathanatos 2mo agoWhen my parents closed on a house, me, and all of my siblings, regularly and illegally got scam/spam calls for my parents' home. We are not on the deed. We are not involved in the transaction in any way. Also, don't buy a car, either; that also generates a significant volume of incoming scams & fraud, although most of that is in the snail mail. (But "at least" there I am the person in the transaction … I guess? But fraud is still fraud.
- baby 2mo agoI think the problem is that you can’t create virtual, domain separated, phone numbers on demand
- FizBack 2mo agoGreat tip I saw once - whenever you have to register through a form, use First Name + the name of the company / service you are leaving your data to. Once you start receiving spammy emails / text messages calling you by your « name », you know who you have to thank for leaking your data
- snovymgodym 2mo agoIn America we have amazing, reliable communication systems (postal, sms, email, telephone) that are rendered horribly degraded in terms of their actual usability because we allow them to be clogged with filth. When you buy a car in the US, there's an entire industry of psuedo-scammers that scrapes the new vehicle registration data and will send you letters soliciting you to buy a "warranty" with horrible terms and pricing, which are intentionally crafted to look like they come from the dealership, manufacturer, or a more reputable insurance company. This is just one example, the only silver lining is that junk mail has existed for long enough that even most senior citizens understand that they need to be skeptical of anything they receive. SMS and Email is a constant adversarial game where you will be inundated with scams, advertising, political solicitations, and all other manner of noise as you try to combat it with spam filters, blocklists, hidemyemail, burner addresses all the while hoping you don't miss an important communication from someone you actually care about. As for phones, scam calls and telemarketing has gotten so bad that most people will not answer a call from an unknown number unless they're expecting to hear from someone (e.g. doctor, mechanic). But lots of older people still hold onto the unfortunately outdated cultural norm that you always pick up the phone when it rings, and that's one of the most common attack vectors for scamming the elderly. I think it's critical that people understand that it does NOT have to be like this. The US has a business regulatory regime that biases towards letting an entity get away with pretty much anything, and alternatives exist even among capitalist countries.
- ducdetronquito 2mo agoUntil this law is ever applied, I warmly recommend my fellow french to install the «saracroche» app to filter out unsollicited calls. It’s free, open source, all my family uses it for about 2 months now and it just works. Btw, if it’s creator read this : thanks A LOT ! :) https://saracroche.org/fr/ https://saracroche.org/fr/
- RockstarSprain 2mo ago+1 Great app, had no spam calls going through since installing it.
- Aissen 2mo agoWas a recent convert. It's so much better than the competing apps, it's almost funny. It whips Google's antispam for example. And it's free software. Though to be fair it is helped by the fact that businesses have mandatory phone prefixes to use when doing telemarketing in France.
- VariousPrograms 2mo agoUnless you can block illegal unsolicited scam/marketing calls, the medium of phone calls is dead to me. If it had 25% unsolicited calls, it would be a bad way to communicate, and in the US it's more like 95%. You could cut the majority of spam calls and I'd still associate phone calls as mostly a waste of time.
- bediger4000 2mo agoThe only way to enforce this is letters of marque. Anyone holding such a letter can track down telemarketers and punish them.
- BrandoElFollito 2mo agoWe already had a system in France which is phased out. The difference is that that previous system was opt-in, and now it i the duty of the telemarketers to get authorization. The problem is that many of the calls come from abroad (and most will move there), so there is no easy way to enforce this requirement. It is only if someone files a complaint ... and the authorities track the number abroad ... and match it to a French provider ... that it will work. Anyway it is better than nothing. I stopped to reply to calls that I do not have in my contacts. If it is important someone will leave a message or send an SMS/WhatsApp
- pessimizer 2mo agoMeanwhile, the US cut out a special exception to the do-no-call list for political text spam, leading to me personally for about a year getting about 10-15 text messages a day from Democratic scam PACs that have to be "unsubscribed" from individually, from each of hundreds or thousands of phone numbers. So an exception, and the exploitation of a loophole. They'll never stop punishing me for having donated to Bernie a decade ago. Even worse, the PACs known to be scams where 98% of their proceeds just go to known, named party insiders. Even if I were a Democrat, they'd just have been preying on me and playing me for a fool. ----- > After subtracting these massive operational costs—the payments to Mothership, the fees for texting services, the cost of digital ads and list rentals—the final sum delivered to candidates and committees is vanishingly small. My analysis of the network's FEC disbursements reveals that, at most, $11 million of the $678 million raised from individuals has made its way to candidates, campaigns, or the national party committees. https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-vortex-an-investigation https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-vortex-... https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-08-02/spam-texts-from-political-fundraisers-hard-to-stop https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-08-02/spam-texts... https://pacspam.org/vendors https://pacspam.org/vendors
- balderdash 2mo agoif the fines are only leveled at the actual people making these calls, its a useless law - like anyone is going to see a centime from a call center located in morocco. its only if the carriers have some liability that this will have any effect.
- torcete 2mo agoI reckon that the best way to stop spam calls (and messages) is to start charging for them again. No more flat rates. The scheme that I have in mind is to charge a small amount to the caller and give it to the recipient. I reckon that the balance between groups of friends or family would be zero. Companies surely could pay this money but spammers won't be able to explore a whole list of numbers to try to fish a victim.
- philippemnoel 2mo agoEnfin!!
- mallory854 2mo agoLet's bring this across the pond. I've taken to speaking different languages and just trying to confuse them. If you're going to call me fifty times a day, you're going to get messed with.
- throwitaway222 2mo agoJust ban all out of country calls, and I think the phone network would be fixed.
- monegator 2mo agoItaly already did that, guess how it's working
- throwitaway222 2mo agoPeople are switching to online meetings and email and spam is blocked. Just kill all phone calling, it will work great.
- ninalanyon 2mo agoGood to hear they are catching up.
- wrongdumbass 2mo ago[flagged]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 2mo agoAlso 1785994091 | France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week | https://apnews.com/article/france-unsolicited-telemarketing-ban-4c946192a1e0d611fd80eacc708aa7da https://apnews.com/article/france-unsolicited-telemarketing-... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49192829 1786426630 | France Bans Unsolicited Telemarketing Calls | https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/11/world/europe/france-ban-unsolicited-telemarketing-calls.html https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/11/world/europe/france-ban-u... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49253772 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49253772
- harrouet 2mo agoAs a young telecom engineer working in "Intelligent Networks" in the late 90's in the UK, I learnt that UK phones had a code that could be dialed during a call, so that the line could not hang up anymore. That was geared against telemarketers or abusers, so that the callee could fetch a police officer that would acknowledge the fraudulent call. Today all this data exists in databases. It would be so easy to check call logs from telemarketers to check if they ever called someone on a do-not-call list.