Scam Callers: Can the phone companies not stop them or do they not want to stop them?

Factual Questions
1

I just got called by “Windows Technical Support”. They’re calling because they detected a virus on my computer and for the low low price of whatever they’ll remove it. I’ve had a lot of fun with these guys before pretending to be a computer illiterate. My record for keeping them on the phone is 1 hour 2 minutes 44 seconds. The most recent call I got from them I decided to do the “Argument Skit” from Monty Python.

Them: “Yes hello Sir, I’m from Windows Technical Support”
Me: No you’re not.
etc…

The funniest was when he got frustrated at the end (about 8 minutes) and said “I’m sorry sir, we will not be able to help you.” and I said “Yes, you can.”

Anyway, I digress. I get far more calls from scammers (credit card, travel, windows support) than I get from actual callers. The scammers even far outnumber legitimate telemarketers which is pretty impressive.

My question is two-fold:

1 - Could the phone companies stop these guys if they wanted to or is it technically infeasible / impractical?

2 - My cynical side wonders if these calls are in anyway profitable to the phone companies and so they don’t want to stop them? Not that I think they are in on it, but maybe they get money from services or something. I don’t think so since they tend to be overseas as far as I can tell.

2

Most seem to come from foreign parts - places that don’t care too much about you or me. I doubt that our local telecom provider makes any money from them.

3

It’s a lot like obscene phone calls or email spam. Can the carrier block it? They can block the individual number or domain, but the perpetrator can simply pick up another number/address and use that one until it gets blocked.

4

They actual do make money on the inter-connect fees. The telephone company in the country of origin has to pay inter-connect fees to a phone company in the destination country to carry the call. In the United States, the inter-exchange carrier then also has to pay an inter-connect fee to your local phone company that completes the call.

5

The telephone company also makes money from the various services they sell to people to try to block such calls from their phone line.

6

The short answer is no, they can’t effectively stop them. Think about spam filters for email. They can be designed to quickly stop things based on the text of the subject line, the sender’s address, the recipient address field containing multiple users (a mailing list), and even scanning the body of the email itself. And it can do all this almost instantaneously.

There’s little of this type of info for the phone system to work with. All there really is is Caller ID and that can easily be spoofed. For over a century the ‘prime directive’ if you will of the telephone system has been to connect callers as quickly and with as little interference as possible. Unfortunately, this gives us the present situation. On the flip side, technology like smarrtphones has compartmentalized personal communication to the point where you have much more control on the receiving end at least.