FCC Traced Act Report Shows 2021 Increase in Automated Call Complaints

The FCC received about 4,000 more consumer complaints about calls made from automated telephone equipment or with prerecorded voice in 2021 (through November 30) than in 2020, according to informal data presented in an agency report to Congress on robocalls released Wednesday. The report was required by the Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (Traced) Act. The report recommends “continuing to advance the implementation of STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication technology across the voice network and explore new ways to leverage this technology to protect Americans from unlawful calls.” Complaints about automated systems went up to 42,637 in 2021 from 38,657 in 2020, but the numbers for other forms of robocall showed small drops year over year: sales calls to residential numbers dipped from 92,043 to 91,624, about faxes from 27,937 to 27,002, and about spoofing from 53,736 to 53,320. A single complaint may address several sorts of violations and be counted in the report multiple times, the agency said. The report counts complaints going back to 2016, showing the FCC has received 365,867 informal consumer complaints about automated telephone equipment since then. All the categories had decreases from 2019, when the agency had 58,797 complaints about automated calls and 70,866 complaints about spoofed caller IDs. The report cited spam text messages and robocalls that originate in foreign countries as rising and difficult areas for the agency to tackle. Illegal robocalls that originate abroad “present one of the most vexing challenges facing the Commission,” the report said. In 2020, the FCC had 14,000 consumer communications -- “an almost 146% increase” over the prior year -- that were complaints about unwanted texts, the report said. “Thus far in 2021, the Commission has received over 9,800 consumer complaints about unwanted texts.”