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France Bans Unsolicited Telemarking Calls (lemonde.fr) 57

Posted by BeauHD from the opt-out-to-opt-in dept.
Starting today, unsolicited telemarking calls are banned in France unless consumers explicitly consent to them. Companies that violate the law can face fines of up to 375,000 euros per call, though existing customers can still be contacted with related offers. Le Monde reports: The government says the law is a response to years of consumer complaints. Authorities estimate that about three-quarters of people in France receive at least one unsolicited sales call every week, and many receive more. In 2024, 11 consumer organizations issued a joint call for a ban, denouncing "relentless harassment of consumers through countless unwanted telemarketing calls to both landlines and mobile phones -- an intrusion that has become a regular part of their daily lives."

Now, "businesses are prohibited from contacting consumers without their prior consent," said Alice Vilcot, chief of staff at the Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Prevention of Fraud. "That consent can be withdrawn at any time." [...] Previously in France, people who wanted to avoid marketing calls had to register their number with a government-run service, but consumer groups said some call centers ignored the list. Vilcot noted that an Ireland-based company was fined 6 million euros ($6.9 million) last year for violating France's previous telemarketing rules by calling people on the no-call list.

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France Bans Unsolicited Telemarking Calls

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  • Telemark calls? (Score:4, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @01:07PM (#66283984)

    Are there a bunch of down-on-their-luck ski instructors cold-calling people in France for some reason?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Equuleus42 ( 723 )

      Indeed... alpine touring is seemingly more en vogue [google.com] these days.

    • I usually get calls from"Microsoft", and very exclusive deals. Wine is popular. Someone sold my telephone number once. I got multiple calls a week for a while. I stuck to my mother tongue(Dutch) and pretended not to speak English. It was fun as we both sort of knew that was not the case. It abruptly stopped. I did my usual routine. "sorry ik praat alleen Nederlands." "Oh, I am sorry", the guy replied. Never got a call again.

  • ...to make a Telemark [wikipedia.org] call!

  • I'm going to watch the documentary in protest at their ignorance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heroes_of_Telemark

  • There are no legitimate telemarketing calls any more, just scams. How do they propose to eliminate those?

    • I'd be open to any ideas on how to make the cost of spamming people much more expensive!

      • Ive noticed that the first person you talk to is some cheap overseas call center person, but if you play along they transfer you to an expensive native english speaker. I imagine getting to level 2 is the way to cost them the most money.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Monoman ( 8745 )

          This. If everyone just wasted their time then their costs would outweigh the return.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by pla ( 258480 )
        For AI calls, there's a new wave of YouTubers rocking this space and it's hilarious. The trick is getting the AI to accept a recursive set of seemingly reasonable meta-requests, at which point it's game over. "Sorry, I'm hard of hearing and having trouble understanding you. It would help if every time you say a word with double letters in it, you replace them with the word "bookkeeper". Then just stay quiet until their monthly token budget runs out. Note that's not a real example I've seen, it takes a bit m
        • I watched a video on that. Yes, since the AI agents are programmed to be people-pleasers, you can make increasingly more absurd requests for them to modify their communications until they spend most of their cycles following the chain of requests. But since it's an arms race, I suspect that strategy to waste the AI's time won't work for long.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Easy: Fine the telcos if they do not block the sources very fast. I have gotten 3 of total marketin/scam calls in the last 20 years with that legal situation where I live. Oh, and when a domestic call center violated all these rules, they were raided and shut down the next day. This can be done and it works.

      The reason this does not work in the US is that politicians and political parties are allowed to make these calls for election .... well, fraud essentially. Those are illegal as well in most (all?) of th

  • Nothing will change. They will keep calling. (Score:4, Informative)

    by MikeDataLink ( 536925 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @02:01PM (#66284054) Homepage Journal

    They do not care about the law.

    • Re:Nothing will change. They will keep calling. (Score:5, Informative)

      by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @02:50PM (#66284174)
      And are probably calling from well outside of the EU.

      • Re: Nothing will change. They will keep calling. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Matthieu Araman ( 823 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @03:26PM (#66284282)

        no they are calling with personal looking numbers so it increase chances people pick up phone. it is such a pain, almost nobody answer a normal phone call if they dont know your number

        • I figured they would. That's what they do here. That doesn't mean the number is legit though. VoIP from anywhere in the world, pure spoofing, forwarding...

          It's a clever trick. Which is annoying.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mjwx ( 966435 )

          no they are calling with personal looking numbers so it increase chances people pick up phone. it is such a pain, almost nobody answer a normal phone call if they dont know your number

          Which means the calls are originating inside the country. This means someone is paying for a connection even if it's a VOIP/PABX that connects to a foreign site... this means the Telcos can be held responsible for activities that are now illegal.

          You might not be able to fine or imprison people in another country but you can do that to telcos operating in your country and you can bet your arse that the telcos can tell who is making dozens of calls per minute on their networks (clue... they'll be taking mo

      • doesn't matter since we are talking about telemarketing and not spam. Since they are telemarketing calls they want you to sign onto something for a French company or for a company that does business in France and there is where the state will send the bill. Stopping spam is ofc of more importance but this is not it yet.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          How do you prove they represent the company they claim to represent without giving them a credit card number?

          I generally assume that they DON'T represent such a company, but occasionally one will claim that they represent a company which forwards positive sales to another company. I've never tried to find out if that's true, but it's believable. But such a company is probably off-shore and with no local assets.

        • Okay, that's a fair point right there. I sit corrected!

          It may be different in Europe, but I couldn't tell you the last time I got a call from a "telemarketer" that wasn't a scam, so I just got sloppy and assumed.

          Wait, that's not true! It was in 2011 or 2012, and it was a home security company!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They do not care about the law.

      Indeed. We got a very brief respite in the US but calls started coming in from overseas, and now they're from overseas using local numbers.

    • Somebody must be paying them to sell their product. Whack the people that hire them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by schwit1 ( 797399 )

      Criminals don't care about words on a piece of paper, aka laws. They only care about real enforcement and real consequences.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by djgl ( 6202552 )

      We are a neighbor of France and it has been illegal here for at least 18 years. I still get called about twice a year by people trying to sell me solar panels, wine, stocks or elder care services,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It can be done if there is political will. I have had 3 of these calls in the last 20 years. The thing that does the trick is that the telcos are required to block the sources within hours or _they_ get fined. Also notice that the scam calls in the US that use "local" numbers do nothing of the sort. All that is local is the caller ID. But the telco knows where the call really comes from, because otherwise it would not even connect.

  • Phone # added to do-not-call list 20 years ago... (Score:3)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Tuesday August 11, 2026 @02:11PM (#66284076)
    ...still get serveral unsolicited phone calls every day. This will only get worse as AI drives the cost of phone harrassment to zero. Tell me again how passing laws is gonna stop them... it gets funnier every time! How does France plan on enforcing those laws against bots calling from another country over the internet?
    • I've started filing complaints against the bots that leave a voicemail with a callback number, pretty sure the government can easily trace those back to the criminals making the calls.
      • I used to do that, but found there wasn't much point beyond adding to the statistics. The feds can't do much about it, that number is either going to be invalid by the time they check (may never have worked), or it will have been forwarded to some ephemeral front in India's neighborhood.
        • Wait... after reading the article, replace India with Morocco.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mjwx ( 966435 )

            Wait... after reading the article, replace India with Morocco.

            Replace former English colonies with former French colonies. Much of West Africa is French speaking.

        • You're aware that numbers can be faked? Or suppressed altogether (neither is legal for telemarkers where I live)?
          I've had callers from non-existent dialling codes (I'm not in the US) and also from fake numbers within well known dialling codes. Once I had such a call from a real number and called back (from my fax's number) to see if it was a real person, they were getting a lot of such callbacks and were not happy.
          My VOIP modem allows me to block a small number of ranges of numbers and I use that to block

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by v1 ( 525388 )

            the OP is referring to the "please call us back at xyz", not the caller-id. Faking the callback number would mean nobody would be able to call you back. And then what's the point of leaving a callback number?

            Anyone that calls a scammer back is their golden ticket, they've already bought into the scam. They'll never give you a fake number to call back.

          • Yes, of course. That's what I'm talking about. The DID will be spoofed, or it will be a VoIP number that could be coming from anywhere, etc. I've gotten scam calls from all over the world, all of which showed as being in the US, if not my area code or even exchange. I've had them come in showing numbers that were only a few off from mine, but when answered were clearly international.

            In the EU you're probably more likely to get spam calls with different country codes as I'd assume international calls

    • How does France plan on enforcing those laws against bots calling from another country over the internet?

      This doesn't seem to be much of a problem in Europe. Virtually every single telemarketing call I've received has been local for a local business. But frankly any company that has a footprint within the EU can be fined regardless of where their call centre is.

    • Passing the law might look like a toothless gesture, but it should result in some enforcement actions. If it's not a crime, nobody can ask for the budget to investigate and prosecute.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      ...still get serveral unsolicited phone calls every day. This will only get worse as AI drives the cost of phone harrassment to zero. Tell me again how passing laws is gonna stop them... it gets funnier every time! How does France plan on enforcing those laws against bots calling from another country over the internet?

      I get almost no spam calls... Last one I got was to a number I use exclusively for data on overseas travel (free data roaming in 72 countries for just £10 PAYG/Prepaid so I only put money on there when I'm travelling). My main UK number gets nothing any more, it's been years since I even got a "so we's heard you was in an accident" call. So you can do something about it.

      That something is punishing telcos that allow spammers/scammers to operate. It's relatively cheap to set up a VOIP/PABX setup how

  • Considering that most unsolicited spam calls are spoofed numbers and come from overseas and not originating in France, this is going to be near impossible to enforce. It's really a superficial law that will have little to no effect.

    • The next logical step would be to require telcos to stop spoofing, which they absolutely can do because they have all of the call routing information and can easily tell when a number is being spoofed.

      • exactly, that they still are allowed to spoof the number are insane. I get that the functionality is great for large corps that want to have a single number for an entire department but that would be an opt in whitelist solution so still no reason for the blanket redirect of spoofed numbers that telcos allow today.

    • Considering that most unsolicited spam calls are spoofed numbers and come from overseas and not originating in France, this is going to be near impossible to enforce. It's really a superficial law that will have little to no effect.

      False. Most unsolicited spam calls are from local companies selling you a local product, even if the number originates from overseas. Hell most are VERY local, usually a utility trying to get you to change you electricity or gas contract.

  • you just managed to pass some worthless legislation.

    • If they want to convince you to buy something, they have to have numbers where they can be reached. If I get a call from a (domestic) number which could be genuine, I ring back from a number which is configured as a fax and see what happens. A telemarketeer and then it's "is Birgit there? Sorry, wrong number."

  • Bonjour (Score:2)

    by PPH ( 736903 )

    Bonjour, c'est Leonardo.

  • At least Microsoft can still call me to let me know about important security issues.

  • Heavy Water factory in Norway?

    But Homer Simpson invented slightly heavy water (Deuterium Hydroxide)

  • The problem is that the vast majority of legitimate businesses stopped using unsolicited calls a long time ago. The callers that are left are mostly scam centers in places like SE Asia that use spoofed numbers and some combination, robodialers, AI, and slave labor. Since the calls are typically already scams of various nature, the callers already face criminal penalties. A theoretical fine they will never pay isn't going to change behavior at all.

    The thing that can help is better call filtering at the OS le

  • >"unsolicited telemarking calls are banned in France unless consumers explicitly consent to them."

    And we kinda have that in the USA as well. Plus possible fines. Plus a do-no-call registry. Plus other stuff.... And nothing changed. Companies claim "existing relations." Or they sneak something into fine-print that you sign. Or they call from out of jurisdiction. Or they just don't care and do it anyway, however they like.

    There is no easy way to report them, and really no teeth. It is sad. I wish

    • I wish we could just press a single button and it would submit them automatically to a central database

      I wish we could just press a single button and it would feed their genitals into a wood chipper.

  • One step towards surgically extracting the concept 'telemarketing' from the global consciousness.

  • Good (Score:2)

    by gweihir ( 88907 )

    The important second component is that the Telcos need to be required to block aggressively as well or they pay. With that, I have had 3 (!) fraud/spam/marketing calls in the last 20 years.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ucho ( 1458291 )

      Most people are pessimistic about this ban and for good reasons. GDPR introduced very high (% of revenue) fines for companies that don't keep consumer data safe. And yet it doesn't matter when no one cares about enforcing them. We keep hearing about leaks all the time, but id anyone heard about company that got under as a consequence?

  • There have been press investigations on these spam/scam call centers. Undercover journalists even managed to get a job as a telemarketer. There are groups calling out of low-cost Morocco trying to score monthly subscriptions under 50â, and there are high-stake high-return groups calling directly from France trying to sell investment, bundled with 5000â hidden assurance fees. A single family controls a large portion of these, everybody knows who they are, but the police is, as usual, busier running

  • A colleague of mine has found an answer that quickly ends all telemarketing calls.
    He just tells them that he is under guardianship (or conservatorship).
    The telemark(et)ers understand they won't get any money directly from him and hang up quickly.

  • Picking up a call has been ruined by telemarketers.

    If only the US had the balls to stop this as well. Specifically the interconnect crap that makes the call farms overseas cheap.

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