Because individually they'll do a worse job of mitigating spam than if they try to mitigate it collectively.
This is almost certainly true, but they might make more money if (for example) one carrier's half-assed spam mitigation technology is shown to work better than a competing carrier's quarter-assed spam mitigation technology. From the perspective of some analysts, collaborating with competitors over a technology that might otherwise be used as a competitive advantage is leaving money on the table, even if the end resul…
I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
Calling to almost all US numbers is cheap. You don't have to pay more to call mobile numbers, for example. Additionally, people in the US have a generally high ability to pay and often have means to pay for things over the phone. So, you don't have to pay much to try to scam people, and if you do, you're likely to get paid. Probably the proliferation of small telephone companies helps avoid tracking and getting boote…
Maybe if each caller be required to pay a few cents per call, mass robocalling will be too expensive. Same for email spam: charge an e-stamp of a cent or two. I'd be willing to pay a bit to keep out riff raff.
Frequent callers/emailers who you register with your account can be given a discount.
I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
Calling to almost all US numbers is cheap. You don't have to pay more to call mobile numbers, for example. Additionally, people in the US have a generally high ability to pay and often have means to pay for things over the phone. So, you don't have to pay much to try to scam people, and if you do, you're likely to get paid. Probably the proliferation of small telephone companies helps avoid tracking and getting boote…
The overwhelming majority of the US also speaks English, which makes it really easy to hire telephone operators. And there's also large immigrant communities that do not speak well enough and are unfamiliar with and afraid of the government.
There are 38M Spanish speakers in the US compared to 8M people in all of Austria.
I'll take your word for that. But the problem is that bad regulation has created a downside for providers to block spam calls so they continue not to. I would easily switch providers tomorrow if one of the features was "no spoofed numbers". This would be a giant market advantage if not prevented by this regulatory issue (whatever it is).
T-Mobile offers it for free: https://www.t-mobile.com/resources/call-protection Verizon Wireless offers it for $2.99 a line: https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/call-filter-faqs/ Not sure about the other major carriers.
Neither of those block spoofed numbers, both work by creating a blacklist.
Here's very simple idea for Apple: Let only calls from known contacts ring, the rest auto-goes to voicemail. Why is this so F *ING hard for Apple to implement?
Because it's already there, it's called Do Not Disturb mode
DND also prevents notifications/texts/etc. I think both IOS and Android have that issue.
I'll take your word for that. But the problem is that bad regulation has created a downside for providers to block spam calls so they continue not to. I would easily switch providers tomorrow if one of the features was "no spoofed numbers". This would be a giant market advantage if not prevented by this regulatory issue (whatever it is).
T-Mobile offers it for free: https://www.t-mobile.com/resources/call-protection Verizon Wireless offers it for $2.99 a line: https://www.verizonwireless.com/support/call-filter-faqs/ Not sure about the other major carriers.
I am on T-Mobile. There was a point when most of the spam to my phone was from Scam Likely. Then the robocallers learned that this is the truth, and I get spam about my credit card and something in Chinese that isn't so flagged.
I have had a Google Voice number since it was Grand Central. It has gone on all of my business cards. It's at the bottom of every email. I put it on my website. Google does an amazing, world class, mind blowing, job of filtering out robo calls. I get maybe one a week at most. I get more calls direct to my cell number from random call bots that hit every number with mobile carriers than I do through my Google Voice nu…
I used Google voice for years while Google let it languish in relative obscurity. Eventually after I realized it was silently dropping group messages because they were MMS and Google never worked on supporting MMS (images were dropped too back then) I left it for iOS and iMessage. Getting dropped from group chats meant people thought you were ignoring them and you'd miss invitations. Google had a huge lead with voice…
I only recently noticed that Voice was dropping certain text messages from being forwarded so I had missed whole conversations with friends. It made me feel inconsiderate. In the meantime, I'm checking the Voice app often, but I've now started to push everyone away from my gVoice number to my actual number.
I read a lot about the plague that robocalls are on international forums, especially from the U.S. But I live in central Europe, Austria, and received only two SPAM calls in my whole life, both by what seemed to be actual human agents on the other side and hear from similar amounts from friends I've asked about the phenomena. Can someone explain why it seems such hard to resolve problem elsewhere while it seems hardl…
People in the US are more likely to fall for these pitches.
Maybe due to the lower average intelligence of the common dude. Just a hypothesis. This phenomenon deserves a deeper inquiry.
I use Robokiller on iOS -- it screens the calls and answers spam with prerecorded scripts paced to match response times and then sends me the recording of the interaction.
The difference is regulation. The US is firmly gripped by the belief that "regulation doesn't work", and keeps electing people who try to prove that true via incompetence, cronyism and ideological malice.
We have plenty of regulation and government attention on the issue, and I somehow doubt Congressional pockets are being lined by the campaign contributions from Big Spam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Do_Not_Call_Registry
Carriers make money terminating the calls both in terms of using people’s cell minutes but all reciprocal compensation for terminating the call on their network. Carriers can get rid of it any time they want. Some even offer services to block the calls for a price like Att call protect.