FTC to Use Consumer Complaints to Help End Robocalls

Privacy/Cyber Risk & Data Security FTC Consumer Complaints

On August 1, the FTC announced a new initiative to help stop the practice of illegal robocalls. According to the FTC, more than 1.9 million complaints regarding unwanted robocalls were received from January through May of this year, making it the FTC’s number one complaint category. Under the new initiative, using information received from consumer complaints, the FTC will release reported robocall phone numbers each day to telecommunications carriers and other industry partners currently implementing call-blocking solutions and will include information such as the date and time the call was received and the nature of the call. “The consumer complaint data is crucial because many of today’s call-blocking solutions rely on ‘blacklists’—databases of telephone numbers that have received significant consumer complaints—as one way to determine which calls should be blocked or flagged before they reach consumers’ phones,” the FTC stated.