Yes, it's pervasive. I get 4-5 calls per day, most of them scams trying to sell auto warranties or cheap vacations. All of them spoof the caller ID of the caller so it looks like somebody from my area. We have a national do-not-call list is a joke but that only holds legitimate businesses accountable. There's almost no enforcement for these fly-by-night companies.

There are initiatives in the works to prevent this behavior but they keep getting delayed, presumably because the telcos will have to do some work that doesn't fill their pockets so they're dragging their feet.

Yes, it is a symptom of our collective inability to solve problems-- even trivial ones.

Most people I know get between two and ten calls a day, with Id say 3 or 4 being the median.

There are two sorts of calls-- actual spam calls that try and sell you something. And calls to verify a number is active-- these calls just are just silence, but if you pick up, your number will be added to a list of valid phone numbers and sold to spammers.

The spammers then take phone numbers and try to match them up with data breeches etc, or just cold call.

I don't think most people fall for these fraudulent calls, but the elderly are very vulnerable. I've helped several friends parents get control of their computers back after they willingly gave control of it to someone who who claimed to be from "Microsoft tech support" even though they had a mac.

I get them frequently in Australia. Calls claiming (but likely faked with VoIP) to come from various places overseas, and from within Australia. I get a few different types:

a) Recently it has been computer voices leaving me voicemails claiming I've ordered thousands of dollars of stuff on Amazon, and I need to call some number to cancel the order

b) I got one guy claiming to be from a major ISP and saying my Internet was broken and he needed to help me fix it. I knew it was nonsense because I don't even use that particular ISP

c) Recorded messages claiming the Australian government is going to prosecute me for tax evasion, and if I just wait for the call centre operator to come online, they'll fix the matter for me by accepting payment of unpaid taxes

I think they are just dialling random numbers, looking for easily-tricked people.

Mexico too. Before the pandemic I had a few spam calls a month, but now there were days when I received 20-50 from a misconfigured call center automatic caller.

It forced me to silence all calls from strangers. We have laws and a system to block and report spam callers, but it seems they don't work anymore.

Do you recall that post where a guy was getting multiple scam callers and he was three-way-connecting them so they would spam-eachother-out... it might have been robo-calls... but he would pitt two spam/robos against eachother and have them rap-battle it out...

I tried to find that, but couldn't. The closer I recall was a video where someone put Alexa and other assistant(s), and they kept telling each other they couldn't understand the request.

Got it in France too all the time. Never in Switzerland or the Netherlands though.

I got maybe two calls in France in the last 10 years, from companies I am with (but still unsollicited)

In France I got one that I can remember of in all the time I've had this number, which is over ten years now. And it was an opinion poll. Also got 5 or 6 scam SMS.

I get spam texts fairly often in the UK, and I almost never give out my number, so no idea where they come from.

I also occasionally get calls from unknown numbers, which I don't answer, but if I look them up are usually associated with spam calls. My grandmother also gets them fairly often on her landline, usually of the "there is a problem with your computer" scam variety, but sometimes trying to sell her insurance for a random appliance.

Fingers crossed, but I've not really had any spam issues on a few UK numbers.

I have even been quite generous in giving out one (i.e. using for any online stores that insist on a phone number), and I've yet to really have any unsolicited call that I can think of.

Phone numbers do get recycled by operators, so there's definitely some luck - I've seen some issues with landline numbers, specifically people trying to trace former users of the number. I imagine if you get "unlucky", you might really have little option beyond call blocking or trying to get a new number.

I did find it interesting that, at least for N=1, giving out your number fairly freely, including when you shop online (but not opting in to marketing etc) didn't seem to result in any issues, even after 8 years or so.