Last month the FTC published their 2015 Biennial Report to Congress and there were some interesting highlights.
- The national Do-Not-Call Registry list continues to grow, now with over 222 million active registrations, an increase of close to 5 million new registrants in 2015.
- In 2015, 2504 entities paid fees to access the DNC registry totaling over $13 million dollars, a slight decrease from the prior year.
- While we are all aware that certain entities, such as charitable organizations, can access the registry for free, were you aware that many small business who access five or fewer area codes of data in a year, can also access the registry for free? 20,057 such entities did so in 2015.
- New telecommunication technology has resulted in a marked increase in ‘robocalls’. As a result the FTC has seen a 300% increase in complaints over the last 6 years. In 2015 there was an average of 175,000 robocall complaints each month!