Reports of Unwanted Telemarketing Calls Down More Than 50 Percent Since 2021

Today, the Federal Trade Commission released the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2024 which shows that consumer reports about unwanted calls continue to drop for the third straight year, with complaint volume down by more than half since 2021.

The FTC has pursued a multifaced strategy to crack down on unwanted calls. In 2023, the agency announced Operation Stop Scam Calls, the largest crackdown on illegal telemarketing in the agency’s history. This year, the agency issued a rule banning impersonation of government or business, and expanded the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) to protect businesses facing illegal telemarketing. The FTC is also confronting emerging threats such as voice cloning, by launching a Voice Cloning Challenge and clarifying that the TSR covers AI-enabled scam calls.

“Illegal calls remain a scourge, but the FTC’s strategy to pursue upstream players and equip the agency to confront emerging threats is showing clear signs of success,” said Sam Levine, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “In the years to come, it will be critical we continue this progress by confronting not only telemarketers but those firms who knowingly profit from scam calls.”

Now in its 16^th year of publication, the FTC’s data book provides the most recent fiscal year information available on robocall complaints, the types of calls consumers reported to the FTC, and a complete state-by-state analysis of the data. According to this year’s edition, complaints unwanted calls about medical and prescription issues topped the list, with more than 170,000 reports—more than half of which were robocalls—received during the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2024.

FY 2024 Registration and Complaint Data

The FTC’s National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry lets consumers add their phone number and choose not to receive most legal telemarketing calls. In the last fiscal year, more than 4.2 million people signed up with the DNC Registry, bringing the total to more than 253 million actively registered phone numbers, up from 249.5 million at the end of FY 2023.

The overall number of complaints about unwanted calls continued its decline in FY 2024, down more than 33,000 from FY 2023. The number of consumer complaints decreased for most topics, though complaints about calls related to debt-reduction, the third largest topic, saw an increase of more than 85 percent from last year.

In FY 2024, the Commission received 1.1 million complaints about robocalls, down from 1.2 million in FY 2023, and from more than 3.4 million in FY 2021. This is the third year in a row the number of robocalls reported has decreased. For every month in the fiscal year, robocalls—defined under FTC regulations as calls delivering a prerecorded message—made up most of the consumer complaints about DNC violations.

Reports about imposters comprised the second-most commonly reported topic, with consumers filing more than 158,000 complaints. Complaints about debt reduction made up the third-most commonly reported topic, followed by complaints about energy, solar, and utilities and home improvement and cleaning. The FTC’s new Impersonation Rule applies to government imposters and anyone who misrepresent affiliations, endorsements, or sponsorships by legitimate businesses, such as scammers who promise solar energy to consumers for free or at little cost.

Registration and Complaint Data by State

The FTC also provides a state-by-state breakdown of its data. New Hampshire continues to top the nation in active DNC registrations per capita. The top five states reporting the most DNC complaints per 100,000 people in FY 2024 were Delaware, Ohio, Arizona, Illinois, and North Carolina.

The underlying data in the report is publicly available on the FTC’s website. Information for consumers about the DNC Registry, company-specific DNC requests, and telemarketer caller ID requirements can be found on the FTC’s website, and consumers can sign up for the DNC Registry for free. Other information about robocalls and what consumers can do about them is also available. To report unwanted telemarketing calls, consumers can file a complaint at www.donotcall.gov or call 1-888-382-1222.

The primary staffer on the FY24 report is Paul Witt in the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.