On my landline, yes, I still have one, I’m still getting unwanted calls. However, not as many as in the past.
The police organization, with the man or men with Texas accents, keep calling, although I told them once to take me off their list. I told them I’d never give them a donation.
The caller says, “Lisa?” Lisa’s my daughter who lives in Spain. I just hang up, fast. Years ago, I tried to say something polite. Not anymore.
And that’s what consumer protection agencies recommend when you get a spam call: Hang up. I can’t do it fast enough these days.
On my cellphone, I’m getting more unwanted calls. The helpful thing there is that it says “Scam likely” on the incoming calls.
The Federal Trade Commission says things are improving on unwanted calls reduction.
On Friday, the agency released the latest information from the National Do Not Call Registry, which shows that consumer reports about unwanted calls continued to drop for the third straight year, with complaint volume down by more than half since 2021.
The FTC it has taken three actions to crack down on unwanted calls:
- Launching Operation Stop Scam Calls, a federal and state operation that targets telemarketers and the companies that hire them, lead generators who provide consumers’ telephone numbers to robocallers illegally, and service providers who facilitate illegal robocalls, which often originate overseas.
- Issuing a rule banning impersonation of government or business, and expanding the Telemarketing Sales Rule or TSR to protect businesses facing illegal telemarketing.
- Clarifying that the TSR covers AI-enabled scam calls.
“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,” Sam Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
In Fiscal Year 2024, the FTC received 1.1 million complaints about robocalls, down from 1.2 million in FY 2023, and from more than 3.4 million in FY 2021.
For complaints on unwanted calls, medical and prescription issues topped the list, with more than 170,000 reports – more than half of which were robocalls. Reports about imposters comprised the second-most commonly reported topic, with consumers filing more than 158,000 complaints. Complaints about debt reduction made up the third-most commonly reported topic, followed by complaints about energy, solar, and utilities and home improvement and cleaning.
The FTC’s National Do Not Call Registry lets consumers add their phone number and choose not to receive most legal telemarketing calls. In the last fiscal year, more than 4.2 million people signed up with the registry, bringing the total to more than 253 million actively registered phone numbers, up from 249.5 million at the end of FY 2023.
Click here to sign up for the registry.
