France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week • Hacker News Board

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#51

Post by frollogaston » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:49 PM UTC

ActionHank wrote: post #20

mkj wrote: post #18

Australia banned telemarketing a while ago, it worked pretty well. The only spam phone calls left are 100% illegal scammers. https://www.acma.gov.au/telemarketing-and-e-marketing they give out million+ dollar fines which sort things out. Just being a customer doesn't allow them to send marketing, you have to opt in.

It's the year 2026, I refuse to believe that phone companies cannot figure out who is a scammer and who is not.

I get if it's hard to figure out who's a scammer, but can't they at least figure out who is calling? And if the other end can't prove that it owns that number, they don't get to call me.

Also, getting SMS from email addresses. Nobody asked for that feature, please nuke it.

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#52

Post by thisislife2 » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:50 PM UTC

frollogaston wrote: post #42

thisislife2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many scammers use internet telephony to call someone and some even spoof the caller id. In India, the mobile companies request subscribers to report any international call which shows local spoofed caller ids to them, so they can investigate it. So I am guessing it is trickier than we believe to track them ...

Can they at least flag calls as being from voip?

If it is local, they probably can. But VoIP being international is the problem. See Why in the year of our lord 2022 am I still getting robocalls??? - https://www.vox.com/recode/22882647/robocalls-robotexts-scam... ...

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#53

Post by frollogaston » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 8:55 PM UTC

thisislife2 wrote: post #52

frollogaston wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can they at least flag calls as being from voip?

If it is local, they probably can. But VoIP being international is the problem. See Why in the year of our lord 2022 am I still getting robocalls??? - https://www.vox.com/recode/22882647/robocalls-robotexts-scam... ...

Unfortunately it's paywalled, but... International in which way? The actual connection from the voip system to the POTS must be inside the country I thought. And if it's not, there has to be some telco-operated gateway to whichever country it's in. Sure the end person using it is in another country connecting via internet, but there must be some local entity to go after.

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#54

Post by Rygian » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

bionsystem wrote: post #37

mdrzn wrote: post #26

You can ban these practices as much as you want, but what we really need is ENFORCING. I have to be able to report a phone number that called me, and have them either fined or blocked at the national level for spam.

We have that in France already it is called bloctel

Bloctel is becoming obsolete due to this change.

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#55

Post by gruez » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 9:52 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #49

gruez wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make any sense when you look at the other options, one of which is "Mobile calls", but no "long distance" or "foreign" option. Moreover twilio operates over the internet. There's no concept of "local" on the internet. The concept of long distance only really exists for landlines and cell phones, but even in the latter case it gets blurred because of wifi calling. You could have a SIM for a US carrier but…

Exactly, no long distance or foreign option. So these must be local calls, meaning they are made from a French twilio number to a French number.

>So these must be local calls

No, you're just reading too much into "local". The price page for US also only has "local" only, but I know for a fact that "long distance" calls work fine.

https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/us

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#56

Post by ogou » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

This could be dealt with in the U.S. with simple enforcement, but would also limit political parties soliciting by phone and that is my conspiracy theory for why it isn't enforced. It is trivial to find the VoIP providers that are providing the numbers to these telemarketing companies. NANPA (North American Numbering Plan Administrator) has a tool for finding them. https://nanpa.com/sites/default/files/2025-03/InstructionsFo...

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#57

Post by inigyou » Fri, Aug 07, 2026, 7:33 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #55

inigyou wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, no long distance or foreign option. So these must be local calls, meaning they are made from a French twilio number to a French number.

>So these must be local calls No, you're just reading too much into "local". The price page for US also only has "local" only, but I know for a fact that "long distance" calls work fine. https://www.twilio.com/en-us/voice/pricing/us

So you called yourself from a French Twilio number and got a French caller ID and got billed the local US rate?

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#58

Post by wolvoleo » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:30 AM UTC

They should do the same here in Spain and not just for consumers but B2B as well.

I get several sales people bugging me on email and LinkedIn per day. Of course I block them all but it just sickens me.

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#59

Post by wolvoleo » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 4:31 AM UTC

jordiburgos wrote: post #10

It happened in Spain months ago. Then the "marketers" start calling from international phone numbers.

AHH is that why I get so many international calls?

Also the energy company scammers in Spain are still going strong. Even on local numbers.

Re: France is banning unsolicited telemarketing calls starting next week

#60

Post by nephihaha » Sat, Aug 08, 2026, 9:58 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #6

nephihaha wrote: post #3

There is a grey area here of calls from businesses which the customer is signed up to, or has had previous dealings with. Many will be unsolicited but not all will be. Many of these calls are coming out of the Third World countries which are barely regulated in this regard, so good luck with enforcing it.

Which is why nowadays I never take calls if the prefix is from a country I don't have connections with, it is private, or doesn't map to any of my contacts. If it is someone that I actually know, they will be aware how to actually reach me.

I paid for a spam call blocking service about twenty years ago. The annoying thing is not only did it fail to prevent the spam calls from abroad, when someone was trying to call me from Germany it wouldn't let the call through.