I’m in Europe and hardly ever receive unsolicited SMS or phone calls. Somehow, at least to me, this seems like a US problem.
Every single time the subject of robocalls or spam texts is brought up on HN, someone claiming to be from Europe shows up to ask why it's a U.S.-only problem.
Then people from Germany and France and Greece and the U.K., and elsewhere in Europe show up and say how they have to deal with it, too, and it's not just an American thing.
In my RSS feed are several European news sources, and they all talk about robocalls occasionally.
Who are these apparently very few people in Europe who allegedly have never dealt with telephonic spam, and why do they always feel the need to talk about their personal situation when it has no bearing on the discussion at hand?
You state that you "hardly ever receive unsolicited SMS or phone calls."
I'm in America, and I too get unsolicited messages "hardly ever": about one unsolicited SMS per month, and spam phone calls about six times a year on my work phone, and maybe once each year on my personal phone. Don't delude yourself into believing that every phone in the nation is flooded with spam all the time.
I spend roughly 50% of time in Canada and the other 50% in Europe, mostly Czech Republic.
I have two phones, and usually just put the one for the country Im not currently in on a charger and hide it away in a drawer, and take it out only when Im packing to go to the other continent again.
The Canadian phone usually gets 50-100 spam messages and missed calls during the 2-3 months Im not using it.
The Czech phone has never had a spam message or missed call on it ever.
I dont see why strories like this would have no bearing on this discussion. Its relevant, anecdotal evidence.
It's not relevant or useful, though. You're telling us a story about how you use those phones, the implication being that it's unlikely that those numbers have made it onto spam lists because of your usage patterns.
But carriers recycle numbers, often pretty quickly after someone ends their service. The number on the Canadian phone of yours may have previously belonged to someone who plastered the number all over the internet, and used it to sign up for a bunch of things run by people who had no qualms over selling their customer data to spammers.
So no, these stories are not particularly relevant or useful, because they can never take into account the full history.
My phone number is all over the internet - it was listed as the contact number for our company for about a decade. I occasionally receive an unsolicited call from a human trying to sell something business related, but no robocalls or anything. I don’t know anyone who does receive any. It’s anecdotal evidence, but there’s a trend. It’s useful.
One of the reasons I can imagine is that the Bundesnetzagentur is actually pretty quick about disconnecting abusers.
But like.. Im not claiming its the while story, but definitely a piece of it.
And you just took the info I provided, and added another piece of the puzzle. The observation that more spam exists in US/Canada still applies, is supported by my anecdote, and explained by your analysis. To me, very much proving this info is indeed relevant to the debate.
Unless we want to go super meta about relevance and usefulness.
Here in Germany at the very least this isn't the case as robo calling as well as unsolicited cold calling to private households can be fined with high fines of 10k+ Euros per call. I've maybe had two calls like this in the last 20 years.
You're being pedantic. "once a month" isn't what I would call "hardly ever". If have 2 EU numbers, on one I've never received a robocall/spam SMS (10+ years), on another I got 3 robocalls in the 2 years I have it, that's hardly ever.
This mirrors the experience of everyone I know. When an active robo-scam-call campaign was happening to people it made national news.
That's a very large difference with the typical US experience...
> are included in a high profile data breach of some kind
How is this avoidable specifically in Europe you say? Breaches affect us here just as much as anywhere else, specially since most breaches are user/client lists from large corporations most people can't afford to stop dealing with.
> are the unlucky, statistically unlikely victim of spam from a new source that is yet to receive punitive action
Unlikely? Given the rate at which scam and spam calls have increased in my country as data breaches built up, and this has been going for long already, I doubt they're getting much punitive action here.
Don't use your main phone/mail for registration, so you can avoid spam on it.
> Unlikely? Given the rate at which scam and spam calls have increased in my country as data breaches built up, and this has been going for long already, I doubt they're getting much punitive action here.
I'm not talking about data breaches, that's covered in previous point. I'm talking about punitive action towards spammers that dial random numbers, etc. as they're easily identifiable by the operator
I've maybe twice (in ~20 years) had an unsolicited SMS (I'm in UK), my phone number is online too. I know people get them, but it's hard to tell how they're selected, just luck I guess.
Used to get a lot of phone spam before the telephone preference service (TPS) came in, but not since. Quite a bit of spam in relative terms when running a business landline in a retail shop; tech support scams, service switch scams, invoice scams, but only about once a month.
Every single time the subject of robocalls or spam texts is brought up on HN, someone claiming to be from Europe shows up to ask why it's a U.S.-only problem.
Then people from Germany and France and Greece and the U.K., and elsewhere in Europe show up and say how they have to deal with it, too, and it's not just an American thing.
In my RSS feed are several European news sources, and they all talk about robocalls occasionally.
Who are these apparently very few people in Europe who allegedly have never dealt with telephonic spam, and why do they always feel the need to talk about their personal situation when it has no bearing on the discussion at hand?
You state that you "hardly ever receive unsolicited SMS or phone calls."
I'm in America, and I too get unsolicited messages "hardly ever": about one unsolicited SMS per month, and spam phone calls about six times a year on my work phone, and maybe once each year on my personal phone. Don't delude yourself into believing that every phone in the nation is flooded with spam all the time.