[abacate]

As usual, it's not that complicated, and it's not that simple.

The simple solution would be for the network providers to validate the caller ID numbers for its subscribers, but that requires changes to punish the ones that don't do it.

I've worked with telephony for 15 years and I know the big providers do this for most common telecom protocols, but VoIP providers tend to be more lax. But that's where they shouldn't, and the ones that break this shouldn't be allowed on the network.

[WhyEmail]

Yeah, but they can at least do the following things:

- Don't connect calls coming from numbers they own that they have not assigned

- Don't connect calls from a number to itself (my wife recently received a phone call from "herself". Then she received 20 more phone calls from irate people sure that she spammed them)

- Don't connect calls where the calling number is coming from an invalid area code or LATA

- Don't connect calls where the calling number is a string of only digits. There are no people or businesses with this type of name, most likely.

This would solve between 10-50% of the spam calls I get, I'm pretty sure.