FTC Issues Biennial Report to Congress on the National DNC Registry

According to the Report, the FTC received more than 2.6 million Do Not Call complaints in fiscal year 2025 — an increase from the previous fiscal year — with consumers mostly reporting these violations came via robocalls, as opposed to live telemarketing.

According to FTC attorneys, debt reduction schemes, imposters (calls pretending to be government, business, or family and friends), and medical and prescription inquiries led the list of commonly reported unwanted telemarketing calls in FY 2025, followed by calls related to energy, solar, and utilities, as well as home improvement and cleaning services.

While the number of complaints about robocalls ticked up in FY 2025, reports remain substantially lower than their peak in FY 2017.  This is due to a range of FTC law enforcement strategies, including the pursuit of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers that facilitate illegal calls, according to the report.  The FTC has also recently initiated formal legal acton against dialing platforms and soundboard technology providers that helped provide the software used to blast consumers with illegal robocalls.

Since the Registry was established in 2003, the FTC has filed almost 200 lawsuits against 570 companies and 449 individuals alleged to be responsible for making billions of unwanted telemarketing calls to consumers, collecting nearly $400 million from these violators.

The report also discusses the FTC and FCC’s work to help end caller ID spoofing, the implementation of strategies to combat the technologies that telemarketers use to make illegal calls, and several initiatives designed to spur the development and availability of technology to protect consumers from illegal calls.

Finally, the report discusses the FTC’s support of new technologies, particularly call-blocking and call-filtering products.  All major voice service providers now offer call-blocking and call-filtering products to all or some of their consumers.

The FTC has taken measures to support analytics companies and voice service providers with their call-blocking and call-filtering technologies by releasing a daily list of Do Not Call and robocall complaints, including caller ID numbers, the dates and times of the unwanted calls, and other relevant information.

The Commission also publishes an annual Do Not Call Registry Data Book that provides substantial detail on registration numbers and other statistical information about the DNC Registry.