FTC Reports 50% Drop in Unwanted Call Complaints Since 2021

The Federal Trade Commission reported Friday that the number of consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing phone calls has dropped over 50% since 2021, continuing a trend that started three years ago. From a report: This year, the FTC has received 1.1 million reports regarding robocalls, down from 1.2 million one year before 2023 and from more than 3.4 million in 2021. According to this year's National Do Not Call Registry Data Book -- which provides the most recent data on robocall complaints together with a complete state-by-state analysis -- the highest number of consumer complaints targeted unwanted calls about medical and prescription issues, with more than 170,000 reports (most of them robocalls) received until September 30, 2024.

Spam calls falling? No.

[Geoffrey.landis]

Not any more.

Seems like spam calls were dropping, but in the last month they've skyrocketed-- I think we've been getting about five a day the last week or so..

Re:

[Retired Chemist]

For me most of the spam seems to have switched to emails and texts.

FTC Failure: believing the numbers are reliable.

[Moryath]

The FTC bragging that they're getting half as many reports as in 2021... that they only got 170,000 reports in 2024... is a joke. It doesn't mean they're stopping the spam calls, it just means people gave up on a useless reporting system.

Think about it. No scammer's number shows up on your phone anymore; they're ALWAYS faking the caller ID, either impersonating a government office or doing 4- or 5-digit nearest-neighbor spoofs. Almost everyone under 70 years old has learned by now that Caller ID can't be

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

it just means people gave up on a useless reporting system.

^^^ The Correct Answer ^^^^

But don't worry. Trump will just eliminate the FTC. Problem solved.

Re:

[jltnol]

Totally agree. Not less calls, just less reporting. The kids today don’t ever answer phone calls, so nothing to report. One day, I hope we have a government that represents we the people, instead of we the big business.

Re:

[NXTwoThou]

This... I've made 26 reports so far this week. I go periods where I just don't have the energy to do it since it never stops.

Political spam? Re:Spam calls falling? No.

[davidwr]

If you take out political spam what do the numbers look like?

Re:

[Geoffrey.landis]

If you take out political spam what do the numbers look like?

My political spam has been mostly text messages.

But, a reasonable hypothesis is that the spamming industry ramped up for the election, and now that the election spam drive is over, the industry has spare capacity that they're now using for other spam.

Same here

[lamer01]

Since right before the election, the call volume has skyrocketed. Almost 1 every 2-3 hours. We discounted it as being election related but the volume has remained elevated. The spammers use fake local numbers (per caller id) and the majority don't even talk if you pick up. If you let it go to vm, they hang up immediately. So, I bet this report does not include the months of october/november 2024.

Complaint fatigue

[davidwr]

If you complain and it doesn't help, eventually you give up complaining.

Re:

[zlives]

yup,

Re:

[methano]

This is the answer.

Re:

[swillden]

If you complain and it doesn't help, eventually you give up complaining.

I think it has more to do with mobile phone OSes getting better at identifying and rejecting spam calls.

My experience is with Google Pixel devices, but I find that 75% of unwanted calls just get silently rejected and for the other 25% I see that I don't know the caller, hit the "Screen call" button and before the screening system is halfway through its spiel, the caller hangs up. Bottom line, I never actually receive any robocalls. I'm sure other devices are doing similar things.

People Lost Confidence that Anything Will Be Done

[BrendaEM]

What really have they done?

My solution: you need a federal permit to make more than 100 calls a day, subject for review.

Re:

[Tablizer]

I like that idea, but the real problem is that our phone system(s) is too easy to hack and inject spoofed ID's. The wrong people would get punished.

Otherwise a given junk call could easily be tracked back the perps. Our phone systems being that leaky is also a national security threat, not just "interrupting family dinner" stuff.

XiPutin could cause chaos during an invasion or national disaster to weaken us.

How will that help?

[Roger W Moore]

My solution: you need a federal permit to make more than 100 calls a day

Most spam calls are already illegal. Adding a new law for them to break seems unlikely to help and instead is likely to result in random people getting arrested for accidentally exceeding the quota. Plus many spam calls originate outside the country they are calling probably to make it harder to get prosecuted since they may be breaking local laws but the complaints will go to another country's government.

Re:

[Darinbob]

I don't know if it is FTC, but phone calls on the mobile phone almost always are marked as "telemarketer" or "suspected spam", without my having to do anything. On my mother's land line I had to enable verification which was off by default (stupid AT&T) and then the vast majority of calls were marked in similar ways. It's still annoying to have to spend time to look and see if the call is worth answering, but it's a marked improvement.

But also after this happened for my mother's phone, the calls slowl

It's probably the Stir/Shaken implementation

[Timmy D Programmer]

It's not a silver bullet, but Stir/Shaken does make caller ID Spoofing a lot harder. It's hard enough that, more often than not, when I get a scam phone call, it often shows their actual number. So now they have to jump through hoops to get throw-away phones, etc rather than just spoof various numbers. This makes it a lot more expensive for the bad guys.

Re:

[david.emery]

Well, from where I sit (NH), we're getting just as many spam calls from forged caller IDs (both in-state and out-of-state) as we did 8 years ago. It might be more expensive for the bad guys, but they are CLEARLY paying the cost. And I'm not answering every bleeping call just to try to guess the identity of the spammers, to send in complaints to the Department of Not Taking Any Action. And I poked both senators "Can you ask the FTC ad FCC to document what actions they've taken in response to consumer comp

Re:

[Retired Chemist]

I do not answer calls from anyone who is not on my contact list. Anyone else can leave a message and I will call back, if I feel like it. My late sister, when she was confined to her bed, used to enjoy torturing spam callers. She particularly enjoyed people trying to sell hearing aids since she could pretend not to be able to hear them.

Not my experience

[cpufrier37075]

At my house they've gotten worse every year.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because *the calls are coming from inside the house*!

yeah they hid the form

[drinkypoo]

The form is now harder to find and also harder to fill out.

They solved the problem by making it harder to solve

Re:

[sconeu]

It's right there where it's been for years. https://www.donotcall.gov/ [donotcall.gov]

And how much of that is fatigue?

[Fly Swatter]

Eventually the calls just don't stop and people give up reporting since it seems to accomplish nothing.

Re:

[mjwx]

Eventually the calls just don't stop and people give up reporting since it seems to accomplish nothing.

I think it has more to do with the fact a lot of handsets now identify potentially spam calls, certainly my Android handset in the UK does. And that people have finally realised they shouldn't pick up unkown numbers.

Newer handsets are touting "AI" to answer the call for you and identify the caller.

Figures

[Holi]

When you don't do anything about them people eventually stop calling to complain since it's a waste of time.

Regex filtering

[pauljlucas]

I still wish either the carriers or the phone OS vendors would allow you set up allow/deny lists based on number regex. In my case, I'd deny all and allow only calls or text messages from a very few specific area codes.