Letters: France needs a new strategy to stop spam calls
Connexion reader says the new legislation will not work just as previous rules failed
Cold callers can fake numbers so blocking will not solve the issue
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To the Editor,
As usual, MPs vote for a new law without enquiring why the old one (Bloctel) does not work regarding cold calls.
The problem is how to enforce these laws? Cold callers are now able to fake telephone numbers, so they use a different one every time.
That makes blocking or reporting a number impossible, and until that practical problem is addressed, all these new laws will be equally useless.
It is interesting that email suffers from the same problem, in that it is easy to fake the sender's address.
But somehow Gmail does quite a good job filtering out spam emails. A few get through, but my spam email folder contains many more. Something similar has to be done for phone calls.
Read more: Crackdown law on nuisance cold calls in France backed by MPs
For example, if a number has not previously telephoned another number, they could be redirected to an automated call answering service that asked them a couple of simple questions.
Robot callers would fail the test and not be connected. There would have to be a database of pairs of numbers, not just the numbers used by cold callers.
Alan Hewat, by email
Have you tried using bloctel to stop spam calls? Does it work? Let us know how you deal with them at letters@connexionfrance.com
