Ask HN: Why Can't Phone Carriers Stop Spam Calls? - cascom
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BjoernKW
They can but they won’t because it’s a revenue stream for them just as mail
spam is a major revenue stream for postal services.

I’m at a loss why regulators don’t do anything about this (well, other than
downright corruption, that is ...).

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tusharc
How is phone call spam a revenue stream for carriers? Most plans these days
are unlimited calling. Under that assumption, spam calls are cost and bad
customer experience.

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Broken_Hippo
Sure, personal plans have unlimited calling. But a call center? That's
multiple phone lines at business rates, and often an internal phone system as
well. These are likely special, more expensive lines since they aren't
receiving outside calls. I'm going to guess there are international agreements
that allow for some of the cost of international connection to be paid by the
caller as well (yet another way to make money: International calls).

On the other end, if they were to try to stop spam calls, it would cost money.
You'd have to have a way to find out if a caller has legitimate business or
not: A collection agency might be marked as spam quite a bit, yet shutting
them down would likely mean a lawsuit. Sales calls seem to fall into a weird
grey area. There would need to be a system for consumers to report spam calls.
These all cost money to build and maintain.

Not to mention enforcement, which would be especially tricky given
international calls and the bit about legitimate businesses being marked as
spam.

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gormz
Just write me a quick script to find all spam callers, we'll cancel their
numbers even though we make money off them. Ohh, and you can't mess up at all.
If we cancel someone's number that isn't a spam caller their going to be
pissed. Ohh, and also these spam callers can change their number 100 times a
minute because of voip. good luck!

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cascom
I guess I'm just curious how and where spam callers enter the telco system,
and why they are so difficult to stop...

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Rjevski
The PSTN is like a worldwide message queue with no authentication what so
ever. Anyone can enter from anywhere in the world and spoof any number they
want, even those that can’t potentially exist.

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lonewolf22
Some of the time it's not spam, and they just can't afford denial of service.

