WASHINGTON—The Federal Trade Commission has issued the National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2020—with the number of active registrations on the DNC Registry increasing by two-million over the past year, the agency said.
The FTC’s National Do Not Call (DNC) Registry lets consumers choose not to receive most legal telemarketing calls.
Now in its twelfth year of publication, the Data Book contains information about the DNC Registry for FY 2020 (from Oct. 1, 2019 to Sept. 30, 2020). The Data Book provides the most recent fiscal year information available on robocall complaints, the types of calls consumers reported to the FTC, and a complete state-by-state analysis.
According to the Data Book, at the end of FY 2020, the DNC Registry contained 241.5 million actively registered phone numbers, up from 239.5 million at the end of FY 2019. The number of consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls decreased, from 5.4 million in FY 2019 to nearly four million in FY 2020. Of those complaints, 71% were about robocalls, roughly the same percentage as last year, and 24% were about live telemarketing. In 6% of reports, the call type was not reported, the FTC said.
Number of Complaints Down
During the past fiscal year, the FTC continued to receive many consumer complaints about telemarketing robocalls, but the total number of complaints decreased significantly, the agency said. In FY 2020, the Commission received 2.8 million complaints about robocalls, down from 3.79 million in FY 2019. For every month in the fiscal year, robocalls—defined under FTC regulations as calls delivering a prerecorded message—made up the majority of consumer complaints about DNC violations, with the most, 332,000, coming in September of this year, the agency said.
“Again, this year, imposters were the topic of the robocalls consumers reported the most, with more than 423,000 complaints received. However, this represents a decrease from FY 2019, when the FTC received approximately 493,000 such complaints. This decrease is representative of the decreasing number of consumer complaints overall in FY 2020, compared to the previous year. Warranties and protection plans comprised the second-most commonly reported topic, with consumers filing more than 237,000 robocall complaints,” the FTC said.
New Hampshire Leads the Way
Calls about supposed debt-reduction made up the third-most commonly reported topic, followed by complaints about medical and prescription issues, and computers and technical support.
With respect to state data, New Hampshire continues to top the nation in active DNC registrations per capita (93,791). The states reporting the most complaints per 100,000 population changed in FY 2020: the top five states were Arizona (1,770 per 100k population), Virginia (1,668), Maryland (1,644), Delaware (1,608), and Colorado (1,504).