Did you register to say you _don't_ want random calls? Sounds like you probably didn't.
The UK has a law that says you mustn't call people who don't want calls. Obviously "Never call me again" makes that clear the first time, but there's a (marketing industry operated but government regulated) scheme called the Telephone Preference Service (tpsonline.org.uk) to let you say you don't want unsolicited calls from anybody. They don't really advertise it (why would they) but they are obliged to operate it or else the government will make up its own rules that would presumably be far tougher, like maybe "Nobody wants these bloody calls, knock it off".
Obviously there are still straight up _crooks_ but the thing about such a Do No Call list is it's also full of people who _hate_ telemarketers. When I was a student (~20 years ago) we had a pinned up script for timewasting telemarketers. We could waste five, ten, fifteen minutes of their time and they were never going to make a sale. And their calls were illegal anyway, so now they're losing money on a crime and when we hang up they're getting reported for the call on top of wasting all that time. So the effect is it's not very profitable AND it's illegal.
Thank you. Of course we are on the TPS. That's probably why we get so few UK cold calls. But the backstreet Indian call centres who are nothing but a scam are hardly going to pay attention to it. I don't know how some people are in the Uk are avoiding them. I always assumed they just cycled through every number in the country.
I don't have an answer, just anecdata, nobody I know who still had a UK landline gets these calls. Text spam, occasionally, on their mobile, but actual robocalls, or live unsolicited marketing don't happen.
Pretty sure cycling through every number would get you dropped by anybody in that business. In terms of flagging yourself for attention it's like you spray-painted "Crack for sale here, no cops please" on the side of your drug warehouse. Dialling random numbers will have way too high a ratio of uncompleted calls versus anyone with an actual list of actual contacts, it would take a phone company IT person ten seconds to find out which of their customers is doing that and "suggest" they go elsewhere.
Much more likely they work from a "sucker list" vetted to weed out people like my 20-year old housemates last century who will just lose you money. That would explain nobody I know getting calls. So, I guess maybe you're just unlucky? No more help here I'm afraid -shrug-
The UK has a law that says you mustn't call people who don't want calls. Obviously "Never call me again" makes that clear the first time, but there's a (marketing industry operated but government regulated) scheme called the Telephone Preference Service (tpsonline.org.uk) to let you say you don't want unsolicited calls from anybody. They don't really advertise it (why would they) but they are obliged to operate it or else the government will make up its own rules that would presumably be far tougher, like maybe "Nobody wants these bloody calls, knock it off".
Obviously there are still straight up _crooks_ but the thing about such a Do No Call list is it's also full of people who _hate_ telemarketers. When I was a student (~20 years ago) we had a pinned up script for timewasting telemarketers. We could waste five, ten, fifteen minutes of their time and they were never going to make a sale. And their calls were illegal anyway, so now they're losing money on a crime and when we hang up they're getting reported for the call on top of wasting all that time. So the effect is it's not very profitable AND it's illegal.
I haven't had a robocall in maybe a decade.