For years, many citizens, or should we say all of us, have had to live with the headache of unwanted commercial calls, which are very often phishing scams, and fraudulent text messages. A problem that has generated frustration and a constant feeling of helplessness in the face of the evident lack of control over these practices. Finally, this nightmare seems to be coming to an end: The Spanish Government has approved Order TDF/149/2025, a new regulation that will enter into force on March 7, 2025 and that aims to put a stop to telephone harassment.
Let's see what this new law means in practice, if this time it really is a rule that protects users.
As stated in the legal text, the background to the ministerial order is that experienced in recent years, in which we are witnessing an exponential increase in cybercrime and, in particular, in identity theft scams that usually begin with a call or text message in which the sender of the communication impersonates a trusted organization (bank, public administration, transport company, etc.) with the clear intention of defrauding by deceiving the consumer into providing confidential personal and financial information, providing their personal passwords or taking some action such as accessing a website, calling a telephone number, making a transfer or contracting a service, among others.
What is being sought? Basically, the end of ghost calls. Operators will be required to block calls with unknown or manipulated numbers. This means that calls from fake or hidden numbers that have caused so many headaches will disappear. Commercial calls will not disappear, of course, but companies will only be able to contact users from numbers with provincial prefixes or through 800 and 900. In this way, it will always be possible to clearly identify who is calling before answering.
In this line of transparency, sending commercial messages with fake numbers or aliases is prohibited. This is a fundamental step to reduce fraud and avoid the massive spam that floods our devices.
In short, more control. All companies that want to send commercial communications will have to register beforehand with the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC). This registration will allow for stricter monitoring and will facilitate the identification of companies that fail to comply with the regulations.
Will it be effective? We'll see. Because supervising and sanctioning everything that is potentially foreseen by the law seems like a titanic task. And, above all, everything that is not traceable by technical manipulation can once again leave offenders outside the law.
Will there be a commitment from operators and companies to comply with it? Will the authority have the capacity to enforce it? In any case, we can see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
