FTC Records 50% Drop in Nuisance Calls Since 2021

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) appears to be winning the war on scam and nuisance calls after revealing that complaint volumes have more than halved since 2021.

The consumer rights agency revealed the news in its National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2024.

The FTC’s National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry allows consumers to add their phone number and choose not to receive most legal telemarketing calls. Nearly 254 million Americans are now signed up.

Of the two million DNC complaints the FTC received in 2024, most were related to medical/prescription calls. In second place came complaints about imposters, which garnered 160,000 reports to the government agency.

Overall, the majority of nuisance/scam call complaints were about automated “robocalls” (53%), with 37% involving a live caller.

Read more on robocalls: FCC Names and Shames First Robocall Threat Actor

In April, the FTC announced an Impersonation Rule which enables it to file federal court cases against, and demand civil penalties from, scammers that impersonate government agencies and businesses.

These scams cost consumers over $1bn in the last financial year, more than three times what was reported in 2020, the FTC claimed.

Other initiatives designed to reduce the volume of scam calls reaching US consumers include Operation Stop Scam Calls, launched in 2023, and an expansion of the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) designed to protect businesses from illegal telemarketing.

“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.”

The FTC in April launched a Voice Cloning Challenge in which four ideas were chosen to help protect consumers from abuse of AI in phone fraud.

Deepfakes promise to exacerbate the challenge of phone fraud by tricking both consumers and potentially call center staff. A study from University College London last year found that humans cannot detect deepfake speech 27% of the time.