How to report robocalls to the FTC

Two FTC tools: pick the right one

The FTC (the Federal Trade Commission, the government’s main consumer-protection agency) runs two separate places to report calls, and they serve different purposes:

• donotcall.gov handles unwanted sales calls to a number that’s on the Do Not Call Registry. Use this when a telemarketer is ignoring your registration.
• reportfraud.ftc.gov handles scams, fraud, and impersonation calls (fake IRS, fake Social Security, bogus auto-warranty pitches, “your account is locked”).

Reporting an unwanted sales call (donotcall.gov)

The whole flow for a telemarketing complaint:

• Go to donotcall.gov and choose to report unwanted calls.
• Enter the phone number that was called (yours) and confirm it’s registered.
• Add the date of the call and the number that showed on your caller ID.
• Note whether it was a live person or a recorded message, and what they were selling.
• Submit. You don’t need an account.

Reporting a scam call (reportfraud.ftc.gov)

For fraud and impersonation calls, the process is similar but goes through the fraud portal:

• Open reportfraud.ftc.gov and start a report.
• Describe what happened: who they claimed to be and what they wanted.
• Add the date, the calling number, and any amount of money involved if you were targeted for payment.
• Include whether it was a prerecorded message or a live caller.
• Submit your contact info so the FTC can follow up if needed.

What to include for a useful report

The more specific your report, the more useful it is to investigators. Try to capture:

• The date and rough time of the call.
• The number on your caller ID (even if you suspect it’s spoofed, since patterns still help).
• What the call was about, and the company or product named.
• Whether it was a live person or a recording.
• Any callback number or website they gave you.

Don’t worry if you can’t fill in every field. A report with the date and the number is still useful, and you can file more than one as the calls come in. If anything, a string of separate reports over time paints a clearer picture of a persistent caller than a single one ever could. The same notes you jot down for the FTC (dates, numbers, what was said) are exactly what an attorney would want to see later, so you’re never doing the work twice.

Reporting helps, but it doesn’t pay you

Now the honest part. FTC reports feed the government’s enforcement and the data that powers call-blocking tools. That’s genuinely valuable, and it’s worth doing. What it doesn’t do is put money in your hands. When the FTC takes action against a robocaller, any penalty generally goes to the government, not to the people who filed complaints.

To recover for illegal calls, you’d bring a private claim under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), the federal law that lets the person being called sue.

There are two separate tracks. Reporting to the FTC is your contribution to the public effort against robocallers. A TCPA claim is the private track, where the damages for those same calls flow to you. The same call can support both, which is why keeping good records pays off no matter which route you take.

Turning those calls into a claim

So report the calls to the FTC, and also keep your records: call log, voicemails, and screenshots of any texts. A few habits quietly destroy the evidence that makes calls actionable, so steer clear of them:

• Don’t delete the calls. Your call log is the backbone of any claim.
• Don’t call the number back. It can confirm to a scammer that your line is live and muddies the record.
• Don’t press “1” to opt out. On an illegal robocall, that usually just connects you to a live scammer and flags your number as active.

Then have an attorney look at whether the calls are worth money. Max Morgan, Esq. reviews these for free and works on contingency, so there’s no fee unless you recover. Reporting and recovering aren’t either/or; you can do both. Every case is different and results vary, but finding out costs nothing.

Related: How to report a robocall · Report robocalls to the FCC · Do Not Call violations · Do I qualify?