The Federal Trade Commission has released its Do Not Call Registry Data Book for the 2019 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, 2019.
The number of phone numbers registered on the Do Not Call list increased to 239.5 million, from 235.3 million at the end of the 2018 fiscal year, according to the FTC, while the number of complaints about unwanted calls decreased to 5.4 million, from 5.8 million a year earlier. The number of unwanted robocalls — which are defined as calls delivering a pre-recorded message — remained roughly the same — 3.79 million in 2019, compared with 3.78 million a year earlier.
The number of complaints has now dropped for two straight years, after hitting a high-water mark of 7.2 million in 2017.
Calls from individuals posing as legitimate business were the category of complaints that had the highest increase in 2019, according to the FTC. There were 574,000 complaints about imposter scams, up from 393,000 a year earlier.
Reducing debt was the third-most complained about topic in 2019, behind imposters and medical and prescription calls. Of the 470,000 or so debt-related complaints, 410,000 were robocalls and 61,000 were live callers.
On a per-capita basis, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Jersey were the states with the most numbers registered on the Do Not Call list, while Colorado, Oregon, Arizona, New Jersey, and Nevada were the states that made the most complaints.
The report includes a state-by-state breakdown of complaint data, including data on a county-by-county basis.
