This seems so much of a no-brainer to me due to scammy calls to elderly and pure time loss responding to calls it is interesting not much has been done about it in other countries. I guess the telemarketers have a good lobby.
In my experience, GDPR works wonders here. After saying I do not wish my personal information to be processed and revoke any consents a few times I do not receive these calls anymore.
Telemarketers have ruined the phone network for me. I haven't answered an unknown call for the past 10 years, which sometimes means I miss important ones. 99.9% of all calls are an attempt to get money, and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage.
A ban is the right idea but I wonder how they can handle it, logistically. I think there needs to be a technical solution.
A national "whitelist", where hospitals, doctors, utility companies and such can register to get their numbers whitelisted perhaps, combined with a setting on phones that block any non-whitelist number.
Each country could maintain their own whitelists, and corrupt nations selling whitelist status to scammers would get blocked in any other country at least.
The best technical solution I've seen is a spam review fee that turns into a reward and charged to the next closest originating peer.
For example say you get a spam call. You notify your service provider and pay $10 to have them review the call recording to verify that its spam. An employee listens to the call and determines that it is, in fact, spam. You get a $100 reward for reporting spam and your service provider forwards the charge (+10%=$110) to the peer network where the spam call originated. They will in turn forward it to the next peer, or if the originator is a customer, charge and/or close the offending account.
If this system is mandatory then the problem will quickly sort itself out.
General white-list is likely useless as number spoofing is still easy and prevalent in North America. Scammers would just set their number to a trusted one. You wouldn't have to see the list to assume that numbers from hospitals, doctors, utility companies, etc. would be included - unless they all had separate secret numbers to call out from. Likely this would be unreasonable - especially considering they still aren't able to end number spoofing.
> A national "whitelist", where hospitals, doctors, utility companies and such can register to get their numbers whitelisted perhaps, combined with a setting on phones that block any non-whitelist number.
Of course it would be abused, but a properly verified caller id system for all the big ones; the inland revenue, the major banks, would mitigate 9/10 scam calls I get each day.
Are calls originating in France a major source of these unsolicited calls? According to the article, a lot of the calls are coming from Morocco, outside of their jurisdiction.
I'm in North America and most of the calls I get are using local numbers, often spoofed from (I suspect) South and South East Asia. Good luck enforcing Canadian or American law in literal slave camps on the China-Myanmar border.
In the last 2-3 years, my impression is that most french numbers receive daily unsolicited phone calls. In 2026 they even started sending scammy “missing delivery” text message with your real name printed on an attached MMS picture (on a parcel to deliver), making it even more real.
Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
Automatic filtering on modern iOS has been a game changer here. Assume Android has something similar, but I can't speak highly enough of that one feature
The only effective way to police this is to make the telco accountable and have a reporting system. Someone is terminating the calls and getting paid for doing it.
Current law forces them to use known phone number ranges and to my surprise they respect it. I'm using an app that blocks those ranges, I receive about 3 unsolicited calls per day they're all blocked. We even have a phone provider that can block them for you.
I fear the ban will just make them use random numbers we can't block
Another distraction, probably useless in practice, and in typical French government fashion they carved out a number of exceptions including to sell you subscriptions to newspapers and magazines, because...
"God! I only asked her to be a hooker. It's not like I wanted her to work in telesales".
I stopped picking up unsolicited unknown calls perhaps a decade ago, and nothing was lost. It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'. It would be great to have a tech solution for this, really, but I doubt printing another law is going to help with the scammier side of this market.
That's great. Netherland banned them a couple of years ago. Unfortunately I still receive them. Sometimes a lot. A year or two ago, I received calls almost every week from a major TV/internet provider (Ziggo-Vodafone; total crooks). I told them not to call me again, I complained to the regulator, but as far as I can tell, nothing was ever done about it.
So banning it is great, but you still need to enforce that law.
At least most of the Spanish one can be banned by blocklisting a whole company. which is what I did following a guide I found, and have reduced my Spam calls from 2 per day, to 3 per year.
However, the only way to solve this I believe is that you could once you get an unsolicited call to press a combination like ##01, and automatically this is passed to an agency that deals to punish whoever is behind the call in real time. At least if they call from a national number.
some of the third-party apps can show if a number is potentially a spam or a business. it's handy when your phone number is listed in the business directory to avoid those annoying calls.
My pet peeve is that a full class A attestation is still not a requirement in 2026. The US FCC won't do it. I have no hope from the current administration. However, perhaps France is in a unique position to implement this. The idea is that all calls that have a domestic caller ID will be required to have full class A attestation and all carriers will be required by law to block any calls that do not have such full attestation. Any carrier that attests phone numbers that it is not supposed to should get huge fines and criminal charges. This is my dream for what all Telecoms in the world should do, hopefully beginning with France. This requires broad support within the country and a firm deadline so companies don't shrug it off until the last moment and then demand an extension.
124 comments
[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 22.8 ms ] threadThat new law is not going to change the number of spam calls most people will get, as they're not from properly registered businesses.
Telemarketers have ruined the phone network for me. I haven't answered an unknown call for the past 10 years, which sometimes means I miss important ones. 99.9% of all calls are an attempt to get money, and the 0.1% that's a dentist appointment, a friend that changed numbers or whatever become collateral damage.
A ban is the right idea but I wonder how they can handle it, logistically. I think there needs to be a technical solution.
A national "whitelist", where hospitals, doctors, utility companies and such can register to get their numbers whitelisted perhaps, combined with a setting on phones that block any non-whitelist number.
Each country could maintain their own whitelists, and corrupt nations selling whitelist status to scammers would get blocked in any other country at least.
For example say you get a spam call. You notify your service provider and pay $10 to have them review the call recording to verify that its spam. An employee listens to the call and determines that it is, in fact, spam. You get a $100 reward for reporting spam and your service provider forwards the charge (+10%=$110) to the peer network where the spam call originated. They will in turn forward it to the next peer, or if the originator is a customer, charge and/or close the offending account.
If this system is mandatory then the problem will quickly sort itself out.
I'm not aware of similar proposals (specifically: chaining liability through the route of call transmission).
In Norway there is a list [1] run by the state registry service (Brønnøysundregitrene). Any individual can add their phone number to the list.
Anyone cold calling is required to check that list at least once a month and there are fines for calling someone on the list.
[1] https://www.brreg.no/om-oss/registrene-vare/om-reservasjonsr...
Of course it would be abused, but a properly verified caller id system for all the big ones; the inland revenue, the major banks, would mitigate 9/10 scam calls I get each day.
I'm in North America and most of the calls I get are using local numbers, often spoofed from (I suspect) South and South East Asia. Good luck enforcing Canadian or American law in literal slave camps on the China-Myanmar border.
Related, there has been dozens of private data leaks in the last years in France
I fear the ban will just make them use random numbers we can't block
I stopped picking up unsolicited unknown calls perhaps a decade ago, and nothing was lost. It was impossible, however, to convince my 99-year-old grandma to do the same; she vehemently refuses because that would be 'impolite'. It would be great to have a tech solution for this, really, but I doubt printing another law is going to help with the scammier side of this market.
I am from India and I use Truecaller premium to filter calls. It has become a big head-ache, making us to miss important calls
Also legally speaking all you need is "Check this box if you don't want spam" and the floodgates are open, legally.
You need telco-level detection and blocking. If a cellphone number makes 1000 calls today maybe it's not a real cellphone, is it. Block the calls.
So banning it is great, but you still need to enforce that law.
However, the only way to solve this I believe is that you could once you get an unsolicited call to press a combination like ##01, and automatically this is passed to an agency that deals to punish whoever is behind the call in real time. At least if they call from a national number.