FTC says spam call complaints are down more than 50% since 2021

The Federal Trade Commission said on Friday that complaints about unwanted calls dropped for the third straight year, with reports of such calls falling by more than half since 2021.

In recent years, the U.S. government has stepped up efforts to fight telemarketing and phone scams. In 2023, the FTC launched Operation Stop Scam Calls, the largest crackdown on illegal telemarketing in the agency’s history.

The FTC said it had received 1.1 million complaints about robocalls, down from 1.2 million in 2023, and from more than 3.4 million in 2021. It added that the overall number of complaints about unwanted calls fell over 33,000 from 2023.

Robocalls, defined under FTC regulations as calls delivering a prerecorded message, made up most of the consumer complaints about the agency’s National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry violations. Reports about imposters were the second-most commonly reported topic, with complaints about debt reduction coming in third.

“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.