FTC Releases Updated Do Not Call Registry Data Book; Impersonator Fraud Tops List of Consumer Complaints

The Federal Trade Commission today released the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2022. 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, over 2.5 million people signed up with the DNC Registry, bringing the total to more than 246 million phone numbers.

Now in its fourteenth year of publication, the Data Book also 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.

According to the Data Book, complaints about imposter calls again topped the list, with almost 287,000 received during the fiscal year ending on September 30, 2022, including both live calls and robocalls. In such calls, imposters falsely pose as government representatives, such as the Social Security Administration or the IRS, legitimate business entities, or as people affiliated with them.

FY 2022 Registration and Complaint Data

At the end of FY 2022, the DNC Registry contained 246.8 million actively registered phone numbers, up from 244.3 million at the end of FY 2021. The number of consumer complaints decreased for all topics except for calls about medical and prescription issues, which saw an increase over FY 2021 of more than 1,000 complaints.

In FY 2022, the commission received more than 1.8 million complaints about robocalls, down from 3.4 million in FY 2021. For every month in the fiscal year, robocalls—defined under FTC regulations as calls delivering a prerecorded message—made up the majority of consumer complaints about DNC violations, with the most -- 200,000 -- coming in January of this year.

FY 2022 Data Highlights

As reported last year, imposters were once again the topic of the robocalls consumers reported the most, with more than 209,000 complaints received. Warranties and protection plans comprised the second-most commonly reported topic, with consumers filing more than 179,000 robocall complaints. Calls about medical and prescription issues made up the third-most commonly reported topic, followed by complaints about supposed debt-reduction, and energy, solar, and utilities.

FTC Actions

As noted in the agency’s most recent Biennial Report to Congress on the National DNC Registry, the FTC continues to track how technology affects the registry and the consumers and telemarketers who access it. Advancements in technology have increased the number of illegal telemarketing calls made to telephone numbers on the registry.

For example, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology allows callers, including law-breakers, to make higher volumes of calls inexpensively from anywhere in the world. The FTC brought its first two cases against interconnected VoIP service providers for assisting and facilitating abusive telemarketing calls in 2019-20. Enforcement continued in this area in 2022, including the case against VoIP service provider VOIP Terminator.

Registration and Complaint Data by State

With respect to state data, New Hampshire continues to top the nation in active DNC registrations per 100,000 population (95,648). The states reporting the most complaints per 100,000 population changed in FY 2022: the top five states were Delaware (1,537 per 100K population), Ohio (1,246 per 100K population), Arizona (1,206 per 100K population), Maryland (1,180 per 100K population), and Virginia (1,144 per 100K population).

Underlying Data Availability

The underlying data in the report is publicly available at: https://www.ftc.gov/reports/national-do-not-call-registry-data-book-fiscal-year-2022.

Information for Consumers

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.