Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ipython 1 day ago
One word: incentives. You're absolutely right- and telecom networks get us on both sides. They collect fees from the scammers, then fees from customers to block the scammers. Can't get any better than that.
1 comments

so penalties for telcos have to be higher than they earn from scam calls.

2-5% of scams succeed but penalty should be there accounting for 95-98% that did not succeed.

IANAL but I know failed attempt at robbery or murder is also prosecuted, failed attempts at scam are not, because people just hang up and move on. Then the reality is society doesn’t have enough resources to deal with "scam attempts" - well we have to focus on murder attempts an plain robbery

I don't think we want telcos to block scam calls themselves. We want them to be forced to give the subscriber's actual address to the police.
Why not?

And why would you impose a highly-intrusive personal-tracking system across billions of subscribers?

Because I don't want some stupid AI system to randomly decide I'm a spam caller.

And you know every other country has full KYC for phone connections, right?

What would be a sufficient appeals process or remedy action that might address your concern?

What activities are you engaged in which make you think you'd likely be considered a spammer? What specific harms do you see occurring? Might these be related to your present line of business / profession / employment?

Sure, if someone gave me a false phone number to call them on, I could be declared a spammer. If I had to call more than 3 people a day ordinarily, I could be declared a spammer. I'm basing these on what already happens in the banking sector as a direct result of the regulation you want.
They don't to block scam calls. They can easily limit who gets access to make them, making the resource itself precious enough no one would risk wasting it on a dial scam.