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Comment by cameldrv | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why people don't get spam calls in Germany, but it's not because of regulation. The U.S. has similiar regulation, and in fact individual consumers can sue telemarketers for $500-$1000 per call.

The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

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> The problem is that the callers disguise their identity and in most cases are overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

The problem is that the US telco providers let them disguise their identity.

In Germany, there are anonymous calls, and calls where you see the caller's numbers. I've never once been called by a spoofed number.

So, it's possible to prevent that, given the political will, and the necessary investments in infrastructure.

I get the same caller id now for spam calls through at&t in usa.

I live in Germany and got multiple spam calls in a relatively small time frame (days) from spoofed numbers. I am pretty sure this is not allowed and might be fined too if caught. But i also know for sure there is not much telcos do against this if you are already in a position to route calls, probably for technical reasons. That said this was the only occasion i got those calls that i can sharply remember and it happened some years ago already.

The telcos are working on solving the problem. The FCC recently changed a rule[1] that was, in part, preventing them from acting. The telcos are also working out the technology that will allow them to block them at the source, and all the major ones are planning to roll it out soon. It's not as if they've been intentionally negligent here.

[1]: https://www.fcc.gov/news-events/blog/2019/05/15/blocking-and...

The telcos are part of the problem. I work for a company that deals with incoming robocalls -- thousands a day. I have a very long email conversation in my inbox between us (company) and Verizon. The general theme in this conversation thread is

COMPANY: we're getting thousands of these robocalls into our various numbers, will you please help to stop it?

VERIZON: We don't see a problem, everything is fine. Your bill will be there soon.

COMPANY: attached is a log showing 4,000 calls in the last two hours sent through your network and terminating at our location. Will you please help to stop it?

VERIZON: we have investigated the provided calls and we see nothing showing these calls originated from us. Please contact the upstream telco and ask them. Your bill should have arrived by now, pay it.

COMPANY: but Verizon does not provide us with information on the upstream telcos, we need your assistance in stopping the robocallers. This bill is considerably larger than usual because of all these robocalls. Will you please help up stop them?

VERIZON: we recommend your legal team contact our legal team if you feel we are actually allowing robocalls to pass through our network to yours. Pay your bill immediately.

My German VoIP account allows me to specify any caller ID that I like. That includes numbers that I don't own.

lmao

The issue is that the callers speak English, not German. If you go to Nordic countries where everyone speaks English you get similar calls as in the US.

You can spoof numbers anywhere.

I live in Denmark and I don't get calls like that.

Ok? I’m not saying it’s constant, but you do see it sometimes when the scammers try out new regions.

Stuff like this, which is the very typical US scam https://www.thelocal.se/20140505/swedes-targeted-in-new-micr...

European countries in general just aren’t very attractive to these scams, conversion rates are far lower than in English-speaking countries.

E: Another Danish commenter reports the same calls https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20837015

> European countries in general just aren’t very attractive to these scams, conversion rates are far lower than in English-speaking countries.

You mean we are not as easily fooled? I like this explanation.

That’s possible too. But I specifically mean that we’re not as easily fooled by Indian call center staff.

Recently, there as been a lot of calls where older people got called by a fake police detective. The display reads "110" (which is the emergency number for the police in germany). So, if there are countermeasures, they are not effective.

Source:

German Press release PD Westerstede early this year: https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/68440/4174253

Follow-Up a few months later, warning that it's still an issue: https://www.presseportal.de/blaulicht/pm/68440/4358872

Can you explain the "fake detective scam?" How do they profit from convincing the older person they are a detective?

You can watch Kitboga on YouTube. He calls these centers and walks through the whole scam. Basically they use fear of an arrest to get the target to buy gift cards. It sounds dumb but it works on vulnerable members of society.

Could it be that it's because the calls would need to come from outside the country(probably outside the EU) and there is disproportionately more English speaking people outside Germany?

It's a problem similar to why there are more viruses for Windows, well, it's why there's more Windows machines in the world.

How is it not because of regulation? Robocalls are illegal in Germany and there are very high fines. That seems exactly what regulation is supposed to do and I never got a single random robocall. I got a few calls from my ISP for marketing reasons but after telling them not to call me they added me to the list and I haven't heard from them since. I probably allowed to call me when I signed up.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18765079

It’s about the language barrier.

It’s just not worth the trouble for foreign criminals to develop German language capabilities.

German regulation does exactly nothing to prevent foreign criminals from spamming Germans with robocalls from foreign numbers, Germans just aren’t an attractive target.

> overseas beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

Is it a real thing?

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