Herman, I was looking at my phone this morning, and I noticed something truly disturbing. I went into my settings to clear out some storage, and I found that my blocked messages folder is actually larger than my actual inbox. I am not even joking. I have four texts about quick loans with no credit checks, two about a massive sale on designer shoes from a brand I have never heard of, and a very insistent series of messages from someone claiming I have a package waiting at a post office in a city I have not visited in three years. It is relentless, it is invasive, and it feels like it is getting worse every single day.
Herman Poppleberry here, and Corn, you are describing the modern condition of living in a connected society in twenty twenty-six. It is like a digital mosquito that you can never quite swat away. No matter how many you kill, the swarm just keeps coming. Today's prompt from Daniel is about exactly this, focusing on why spam—whether it is SMS, tele-calling, or even the physical paper flyers we find clogging our mailboxes—is such a difficult problem to solve. He is also curious why it seems so much more intense here in Israel compared to other places, like Ireland where he grew up, and how we handle the sheer environmental waste of the paper side of things.
It is a great topic because it is one of those things that everyone experiences but few people understand the underlying economics of. I think that is where we have to start, Herman. Why is it so easy for them? Daniel mentioned in his note that it seems like they are not even trying to hide anymore. They use real business names, they call from local-looking numbers, and they even have professional-sounding voices on the other end. If I were committing a nuisance or a semi-legal marketing blitz, I would want to be anonymous, but these guys seem to want to be found.
Well, that is the paradox of the business model. If you are a legitimate-ish business using illegitimate methods, you still need the customer to know who you are to close the sale. A locksmith can send a million spam texts, but if he does not give you his number, he does not get the job. But let us look at the technical side of why it is so easy. The barrier to entry for sending a hundred thousand text messages today is incredibly low. You do not need a massive server room or a secret underground bunker. You just need an API key from a service like Twilio or any number of international SMS gateways.
Right, and for our listeners who might not be deep in the dev world, an API, or application programming interface, is basically just a way for one piece of software to talk to another. So, a spammer writes a tiny bit of code—or these days, they just ask an AI to write it for them—that says, send this text to these ten thousand numbers, and the gateway handles the rest.
Exactly. And the cost is the real kicker. We are talking about fractions of a cent per message. In twenty twenty-six, the price of bulk SMS has plummeted even further due to increased competition among global gateways. If you send ten thousand messages and it costs you maybe thirty or forty dollars, you only need one person to take that high-interest loan or buy those shoes to not only break even but make a massive profit. The conversion rate can be zero point zero one percent, and you are still in the green. That is why the volume is so high. It is a game of massive numbers where the cost of failure is almost zero. If you fail nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are still a successful businessman in the eyes of your bank account.
But what about the identity part? If I get a call from a number that says it is from Tel Aviv, and I pick up and it is a bot, why can the authorities not just track that number back to the owner? It seems like a digital breadcrumb trail that leads right to their front door.
That is where it gets technically complicated. There is a practice called spoofing. When a call comes through the telephone network, the caller ID information is basically just a packet of data that the sender can manipulate. It is like writing a return address on an envelope. You can write whatever you want there. You can make it look like it is coming from the police, the tax authority, or your own mother. Now, there are protocols being implemented—like STIR and SHAKEN in the United States—which are designed to verify that the caller ID actually matches the originating number. But global implementation is spotty. If the call is coming through a Voice Over IP provider, or VOIP, it can be routed through four different countries before it hits your phone. By the time it reaches the Israeli network, the original data is long gone.
So it is a jurisdictional nightmare. If the spammer is in one country, the VOIP provider is in another, and the target is in a third, who has the authority to shut it down? It feels like the internet has outpaced the law's ability to keep up with borders.
Precisely. And in many cases, the companies providing the infrastructure are not incentivized to stop it because they are getting paid for the traffic. They might have terms of service against spam, but as Daniel mentioned, if you are a developer trying to use these services for legitimate things like two-factor authentication, you often have to jump through a million hoops to prove you are not a spammer. It is a classic case of the bad actors making life harder for everyone else. The legitimate businesses have to pay for expensive verification, while the spammers just find a less scrupulous gateway in a country with fewer regulations.
Let us talk about the Israel factor. Daniel mentioned that he feels it is much worse here than in Ireland. And I have to agree. My experience living in other cities was never quite like this. Is it just a feeling, or is there something specific about the Israeli market or legal landscape that makes us a prime target? I mean, I get calls for "Kivrei Tzadikim" or "Haredi charities" three times a week.
It is definitely not just a feeling. Israel has a very specific set of circumstances that make it a perfect storm for spam. First, we are a small, highly connected country with one of the highest mobile penetration rates in the world. Almost everyone has a smartphone, and we use them for everything. Second, there is the issue of data privacy—or the lack thereof. Many people point back to the two thousand six leak of the Agron database.
Oh, right. For those who do not know, that was basically the entire Israeli population registry—names, addresses, identity numbers, family relationships—that was leaked by a disgruntled contractor and ended up on the internet. It was like the ultimate phone book for every person in the country.
It is arguably one of the most significant data breaches in history relative to the size of the population. Even though it is twenty years old, that data is still the foundation for many marketing lists. It provides a map of the entire country. But it is not just Agron. In the last few years, we have seen massive leaks from insurance companies, election apps like Elector, and even medical facilities. In a small country, once your number is out there, it is out there forever. Combine that with a culture that is very comfortable with aggressive direct marketing, and you have a recipe for a spam explosion.
It is interesting you mention culture. In some cultures, like in parts of Northern Europe or Japan, a cold call is seen as a massive, almost unforgivable intrusion. In Israel, there is a bit more of a "tachles," or straight-to-the-point, business attitude. There is a sense that "I am just trying to make a living, why are you getting upset?" But even here, people are reaching a breaking point. We do have a spam law, though, right? Amendment forty to the Communications Law?
We do. It was passed in two thousand eight and was supposed to be the big fix. It basically says you cannot send commercial messages via SMS, email, or automated calling without explicit opt-in consent. And the law actually has teeth—you can sue for up to one thousand shekels per message without even having to prove damages. In fact, in twenty twenty-four and twenty twenty-five, we saw some massive class-action lawsuits against major retailers and even political parties for violating this.
One thousand shekels is about two hundred seventy dollars. If I get ten texts, that is a significant amount of money. That is a new television or a very nice weekend away. So why does it not stop them? If the penalty is so high, why is my phone still buzzing?
Because it relies on civil enforcement. The government is not out there hunting these people down with a dedicated spam task force. You, the citizen, have to take them to small claims court. Many people do, and there are actually communities on Facebook and Telegram of people who make a hobby out of suing spammers. They call themselves "Spam Hunters." But for the average person, the time and effort of filing a claim, going to court, and trying to collect the money from a company that might be a shell corporation is more annoying than the spam itself. The spammers bank on your lethargy. They know that for every one person who sues, there are ten thousand who just swipe left and delete.
Plus, the spammers have gotten clever with the content. Have you noticed how many of them frame their messages as a survey or a religious blessing? I got one last week that just said, "A blessing for your health, click here."
Yes! They look for loopholes. The law covers commercial speech. So if I send you a message saying, "Would you like to hear a thought for the day?" and then at the end of that message I mention a service, they try to argue in court that it was not a commercial solicitation, but a religious or educational one. Or they use those shell companies I mentioned. You sue Company A, but by the time you get to court, Company A has no assets, no employees, and the spammers are already operating as Company B from the same office. It is a corporate shell game.
It is like a game of whack-a-mole where the hammer is made of paperwork and the mole is made of digital ghosts. Let us pivot to the physical version of this, which Daniel brought up. The paper spam. If you walk into any apartment building in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, there is usually a pile of colorful flyers on the floor under the mailboxes. It is a massive amount of waste. It looks like a confetti factory exploded in the lobby.
It is incredible. You have these small businesses—pizza places, locksmiths, moving companies, and those ubiquitous "we buy old cars" guys—hiring teenagers to shove these flyers into every single slot. And as Daniel noted, even if you put a sticker on your mailbox that says "no junk mail" or "bli pirsumot," they often ignore it. In fact, sometimes I think they see the sticker as a challenge.
Why is that still effective in twenty twenty-six? We are all on our phones. We have high-speed internet in our pockets. Who is looking at a crumpled paper flyer for a plumber on the floor of their lobby and thinking, "Yes, this is the professional I want to handle my burst pipe"?
You would be surprised. For local services, physical proximity still matters. If your sink is overflowing and there is a magnet on your fridge or a flyer right there in your hand as you walk in the door, that is the path of least resistance. You do not have to search, you do not have to compare reviews, you just call the number. But the environmental cost is staggering. Think of the paper, the ink, the fuel for delivery, and then the fact that ninety-nine percent of it goes straight from the mailbox to the blue recycling bin—or worse, the floor, where it stays until the cleaner comes. We are essentially cutting down forests to create trash that moves five feet from a mailbox to a bin.
Is there a legal fix for that? In some countries, like Germany or the Netherlands, the "no junk mail" sticker is legally binding and companies can be fined heavily for ignoring it.
In Israel, it is a bit of a gray area. There have been attempts to regulate it more strictly under the Clean Air Act and various municipal bylaws, but it is much harder to track than a digital message. With a text, you have a digital trail, a timestamp, and a routing header. With a flyer, who do you blame? The pizza shop? They will just say they hired a distribution company and told them to follow the rules. The distribution company will say the kid they hired for minimum wage made a mistake. It is very hard to assign liability in a way that sticks in court.
It feels like we are in this constant arms race. On one side, you have the spammers using AI now to generate more convincing messages. I have heard that some of these tele-calling bots can now handle basic objections. You say "I am not interested," and the AI responds with a specific rebuttal based on your tone of voice.
That is the cutting edge of spam in twenty twenty-six. Generative AI has allowed spammers to move away from static scripts. They can now use voice cloning to make the caller sound like a friendly, middle-aged Israeli woman or a professional bank representative. They can scrape your social media data in real-time to mention something relevant to you. "Hi Corn, I saw you were looking at new cars recently..." That level of personalization makes it much more dangerous than the old "you won a cruise" scams.
On the other side, we have things like Google's verified caller features and apps like Truecaller or Me. I use those, but I always feel a bit greasy about it.
And that is actually where it gets interesting from a privacy perspective. To block the spammers, many people use these apps which require you to upload your entire contact list to their servers. So, to avoid being annoyed, we are effectively feeding more data into the very systems that allow these lists to be built in the first place. You are trading your friends' privacy for your own peace of mind.
Wait, explain that. How does me using a caller ID app help spammers?
Well, it is not that the app sells it to spammers directly—usually—but these massive databases of names and numbers are incredibly valuable. If an app knows that number zero five four, one two three, four five six seven is listed in your phone as "Herman Poppleberry," it adds that to its global directory. If that database is ever breached, or if the company changes its terms, that verified link between a name and a number is gold for a marketer. You have essentially done the work of the Agron leakers for them, but in a decentralized, crowdsourced way.
So we are caught between a rock and a hard place. Either we deal with the interruptions, or we give up our privacy to a third party to filter them out. Daniel also mentioned something about two-factor authentication. He said that because VOIP services are so restricted now to prevent spam, it is harder for legitimate users to get their codes. I have had this happen when I am traveling and trying to log into my bank.
This is a huge issue for expats or people who travel. If you use a VOIP number for your business—like a Google Voice number or a local Israeli virtual number—many banks or services like Google or WhatsApp will flat-out refuse to send a verification code to that number because they know VOIP numbers are easily generated by spammers. They want a real SIM card tied to a physical person. It is a security measure, but it creates this digital wall. The spammers have poisoned the well for everyone.
It is like the "tragedy of the commons," but for communication. If you are a small business owner trying to reach your customers legitimately, you are now fighting against the fact that everyone is conditioned to ignore their phone and delete every text. I do not even answer calls from numbers I do not recognize anymore. If it is important, they will leave a message, right?
Exactly. But even that is changing. Spammers are now leaving automated voicemails. The trust in our communication channels is eroding. I have reached a point where if a number is not in my contacts, I do not answer. But what if it is the delivery guy? What if it is a doctor's office calling with test results? We are losing the utility of the telephone because of the volume of garbage. It is a tax on our time and our mental bandwidth.
So what do we do? If the law is hard to enforce and the tech is easy to exploit, is there a way out? Or is this just the price we pay for having a connected world? Is there a "spam-free" utopia somewhere?
I think we have to look at changing the economics. Right now, as I said, the cost to the spammer is near zero. If we could implement a system where every message sent carries a tiny, tiny financial or computational cost, the spam model collapses. This is an old idea called "Hashcash," originally proposed in the nineties for email.
That sounds like a blockchain solution, Herman. Are you going to tell me we need a crypto-phone?
Not necessarily blockchain, but some kind of micro-payment or proof-of-work protocol. Imagine if your phone had to do a tiny bit of math that took half a second to send a message. It wouldn't bother you for one text to your wife. But for a spammer trying to send a million messages, it would require a supercomputer and a massive electricity bill. It is about making the nuisance more expensive than the potential reward. Until we fix the "cost of entry," the volume will only increase as AI makes it easier to produce content.
That is a long-term technical fix, though. What about right now? For Daniel and for our listeners here in Israel who are tired of their mailboxes being stuffed with flyers for a moving company they do not need.
On the paper side, the most effective thing is actually community action. In some neighborhoods in Jerusalem, apartment committees have started installing large, locked bins specifically for flyers or moving the mailboxes inside a locked lobby with an intercom. If the distributor cannot get to the boxes, the spam stops. It is a physical solution to a physical problem. Also, there is the "Al Titkasher Elai" or "Do Not Call" registry run by the Consumer Protection Authority.
Oh, I signed up for that! Does it actually work?
It works for legitimate Israeli companies. If a big telecommunications company or a bank calls you and you are on that list, they can be fined heavily by the regulator without you even having to sue them. But it does not stop the "ghost" callers or the offshore scams. It only works on the companies that have something to lose.
And for the digital side? I have started using the "report as spam" feature on my phone religiously. Does that actually do anything, or am I just shouting into the digital void?
It actually does help! When you report a message on an iPhone or an Android device, you are feeding a global filter. In twenty twenty-six, these filters are powered by very sophisticated machine learning. If enough people report a specific sender or a specific link, the carrier's filters will start to flag it for everyone. It is a crowdsourced immune system. It might not stop that specific spammer today, but it makes their job harder tomorrow. It increases their "burn rate" of phone numbers and domains.
It is interesting to think about the evolution of this. We went from physical mail to email spam, which we mostly solved with sophisticated server-side filters. I remember the early two thousands when my inbox was ninety percent junk. Now, Gmail or Outlook catches almost all of it. Now it has moved to SMS and calls because that is the one place they can still get our direct attention. I wonder where it goes next.
It is already moving to encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. I am sure you have seen those messages from random numbers with a business profile picture, usually offering work-from-home opportunities or crypto investments. They often use a picture of a young woman to entice people to click.
Oh, those are the worst. They always start with a friendly, "Hey, I found your number in my contacts, are you so-and-so?" or "Is this the manager?" They are trying to bait you into a conversation.
Precisely. They are trying to bypass the automated filters by initiating a human-like conversation. And because WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, the company itself cannot see the content of the message to filter it easily. They have to rely on user reports. It is the same battle, just a different theater. The spammers are always looking for the "high-trust" environment. Right now, that is your private messaging apps.
Let us go back to the identity thing Daniel mentioned. Why do they use their real names? Like, if a company calls me and says they are "Super Cleaners Israel," they are literally giving me the evidence I need to sue them under the spam law. It seems suicidal for a business.
A lot of it is a calculated risk. They know that ninety-nine point nine percent of people will just hang up and be annoyed for five seconds. They also know that their legal department—if they even have one—is better at this than you are. They will argue that you once signed a terms-of-service agreement for a completely different product that included a "marketing partners" clause. And in some cases, the person calling you is not the company itself. It is a third-party lead generation firm.
It is a layer of insulation. The bank says, "We want five hundred new mortgage leads." The lead gen firm uses spammy tactics to get them. If the bank gets sued, they point at the contract and say, "We told them to follow the law, it is not our fault."
It is incredibly cynical. And it works because the current systems of accountability are fragmented. We have a global communication network but local legal systems. If the lead gen firm is based in Cyprus but calling Israelis, the Israeli regulator has a very hard time reaching them.
I want to touch on the waste aspect of the paper spam again. Daniel mentioned he got a "no spam" sticker and it was ignored the next day. I have seen that too. In some countries, there are actually activists who collect all the junk mail in a neighborhood and dump it back at the offices of the companies that sent it. They call it "return to sender."
That is a very direct way of handling things. But honestly, the real solution to paper spam is probably generational. As more services move online, the return on investment for physical flyers will continue to drop. But as long as it is cheap to print and cheap to hire someone to walk around, it will persist. The real change comes when the cost of the paper and the distribution exceeds the profit from the one person who actually calls the number on the flyer.
It is a shame because it really degrades the feeling of a neighborhood. You walk into a beautiful building in the center of town and the floor is covered in trash. It is a visual reminder that your private space—your mailbox—is being treated as a billboard by anyone with five hundred shekels and a printer. It feels like a violation of the "commons."
It is. And I think that is why it makes people so angry. It is not just the annoyance; it is the feeling that you have no control over what enters your personal environment. Whether it is a buzz in your pocket or a flyer on your floor, it is an uninvited guest.
So, for our listeners, let us summarize the practical side. If you are in Israel and you are getting slammed with SMS spam, you should know that you have the right to sue. There are websites like "Spam-Off" and even apps now that help you generate the legal paperwork for small claims. It can be a bit of a hassle, but if enough people do it, it changes the math for the spammers. If every spam text cost them a thousand shekels, they would go out of business in an hour.
And on your phone, use the built-in blocking tools. Do not just delete the message—report it. On the paper side, if you are in an apartment building, talk to your neighbors. A collective decision to move mailboxes or restrict access to the lobby can be much more effective than a single sticker. And for tele-calling, make sure you are on the "Do Not Call" registry. It is not perfect, but it filters out the big, legitimate companies.
And maybe we should all be a bit more careful with our phone numbers. I have started using a secondary VOIP number for things like signing up for loyalty programs, online shopping, or those "win a free car" boxes at the mall. That way, the spam goes to an inbox I only check when I am expecting a delivery code.
That is a great tip. Treat your primary phone number like your home address. You do not give it to everyone who asks. In the digital age, your phone number is your most consistent identity marker. Protect it.
Herman, I feel like we have just scratched the surface of how annoying this is, but I think we have at least illuminated why it is happening. It is a combination of cheap tech, global jurisdictional gaps, and a local culture that is a bit more aggressive than others.
And a lot of historical data that is still floating around. It is a tough problem, but the more we understand the mechanisms, the better we can protect ourselves. We might not be able to stop every digital mosquito, but we can certainly build better screens.
Exactly. Well, I think that covers a lot of what Daniel was asking about. It is a frustrating topic, but a necessary one to unpack. It is one of those "weird prompts" that actually affects our quality of life every single day.
Definitely. And before we wrap up, I want to say thanks to Daniel for the prompt. It is something we deal with every single day living here in Jerusalem, and it was great to dive into the "why" behind the "ugh."
Absolutely. And to all of you listening, if you are enjoying our deep dives into these topics, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. It genuinely helps other curious people find the show, and it keeps us motivated to keep digging into these weird corners of modern life.
It really does. We love seeing the community grow and hearing your feedback.
You can find My Weird Prompts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Our website is myweirdprompts dot com, where you can find our full archive of over six hundred episodes and a contact form if you want to reach out with your own prompt.
And you can always email us at show at myweirdprompts dot com. We love hearing your thoughts, your follow-up questions, or your own stories of winning a small claims case against a spammer.
This has been My Weird Prompts. I am Corn.
And I am Herman Poppleberry.
Thanks for listening, everyone. We will talk to you next time.
Goodbye!
