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Ive often wondered why BT exchanges don't (cant) "verify" valid UK STD numbers before connecting the call.

BT lost me as a revenue generating customer when I called them after many overseas calls and asked how I could bar international calls due to the nuisance, as I don't get personal calls from outside of the UK. The Droid I spoke to claimed it would be illegal to do so, and had no words when I pointed to the illegality of the calls under Privacy in Comms regulations AND asked why spoofing CLI data wasn't held to be a breach of BT's T&C (and thus allowing for a block legally) he just couldn't answer those points. My view is BT like the termination revenue they get for this.

I moved all my personal stuff to mobile, dropped all the premium services on my landline (which now only exists because we are blackmailed into supporting a voice service to have broadband) and unplugged the handset BUT IT SHOULDN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS.

We have weak and ineffectual regulation, both within telecoms and in business regulation where companies in the UK specifically use overseas centres to get around the privacy protections in place. AS ever it seems the rights of the individual take a very poor place to the scammers and schemers in big business, both here and abroad.

Finally reporting spam calls to OFCOM is no use. Report them to the ICO via webform, if we bury the ICO in reports maybe someone will realise that this is a real issue, because right now it seems that no one in power understands how widespread the problem is - or how ineffectual the current regime is.