To add: it's not about targeting rich markets, either. I have a number from the Netherlands and Germany and neither gets more than one spam SMS per, eh, year maybe on average? Some years none, some years three or so perhaps? When COVID was new, I also got a few spam calls (as did my family around the same time, so I guess it was briefly a thing), but that seems to have stopped again. I've had the Dutch number for 20 years and it's in public records, so it's not brand new and unknown either