[kbuck]

Good. Spam calls and texts are a blight, and nobody was doing anything about it until regulation kicked in.

Last year, after receiving several spam texts from numbers that were registered to Bandwidth.com (which was already difficult to discover), I sent an abuse report. I was not only told that Bandwidth.com couldn't do anything about it (other than forward the report to the reseller), but also they couldn't even tell me who they were reselling services to due to privacy reasons, and did not even know who the end customer was. They advised me to contact the police... To report text message spam.

[ipython]

Exactly. There is a gross information asymmetry that underlies the problem. In order to participate in many parts of society, you need a phone number. For 99% of us, the link between that phone number and your identity is basically public.

Then, along comes scam callers and illegal telemarketers. They have the capability to spoof arbitrary phone numbers to call you, which you as an individual do not have. Then, even if you do discover a real outgoing number that traces back to them, they can hide their true identity behind this bullshit “privacy” excuse.

[robocat]

> They advised me to contact the police… To report text message spam.

That is a cunningly devious misdirection!