More Than 222 Million Cellphone, Landline Numbers on Do Not Call List, FTC Says

More than 222 million numbers were registered with the national Do Not Call registry as of Oct. 1, the FTC said in a blog post Thursday. Bridget Small, a consumer education specialist with the agency, wrote that nearly 5.5 million new cellphone and landline numbers were added to the list over the past year, while the FTC received more than 3.6 million complaints about companies making robocalls or telemarketing calls after they were told to stop. The FTC has brought 105 enforcement actions against companies for violations, including actions against Dish Network for making tens of millions of calls and Caribbean Cruise Line and seven other companies involved in a telemarketing campaign in the past year, she wrote. The U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois on Dec. 12 found Dish liable for violating the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule. The agency alleged Dish or its telemarketer made outbound phone calls to phone numbers on the Do Not Call list. A Dish spokesman at the time told us the company disagreed with most of the court's decision and the FTC "outsourced the management of the National Do Not Call Registry to contractors, with minimal oversight, resulting in a Registry that is inaccurate" (see 1501210040). A Dish spokesman Thursday referred us to statements the company made in January.