[paleotrope]

Local calls were free, long distance calls were not. The likelihood of spammer being in your local area was really really small.

The result of being able to call millions of people from anywhere in the country for essentially free is why we have spam calling.

[wizofaus]

I think it's fair to say in general the tele-comms industry has dropped the ball on ensuring phone calls are actually being used the way they were intended to. 80% of the calls I get I don't even bother picking up any more, and at least 70% of the SMS messages I get are phishing or spam.