Comment by oneplane

> How do we, as the people building the platforms these perpetrators ride on, stop them?

We don't, because there is more money to be made with the way things are setup as-is. And since builders are generally not the money-decision-makers, the platforms keep being built (technically) bad.

Take phone-number-based-scams, since there is no trust in identity, but there is a money-made-per-usage, everyone except the end-user wins to keep everything as-is.

Scammers get money if a scam succeeds, network providers get money regardless, transit agreements stay up since traffic being passed at volume keeps the lines open, maintained and at size. End-users don't disconnect since they'll need it for legitimate use, so they keep being profitable as well.

If the money were to stop being made at any point in the chain it would suddenly all be over. But since legitimate and scam usage is mixed that will never happen.

Replace phones and SS7 and telcos with any other transportation and information system for comparison. Email spam keeps 'working' because there is no real way to identify the sender in such a way that the identity can be barred. Postal spam has the same anonymous sender problem.

Heck, the best way that does work is having to physically hand flyers to people since you can simply not take the flyer, and since you (as a person) can't be handing out flyers without physically being there you can also be identified and barred.