# Unwanted-call complaints

Unwanted-call complaints are reports consumers file with the FTC naming the number shown as the caller ID. Spaw counts them per North American number over 90 days.

Date: 2026-09-27

Unwanted-call complaints are the reports consumers file with the US Federal Trade Commission about calls they did not want, each naming the number that appeared as the caller ID. The FTC publishes them every weekday as its Do Not Call reported-calls data, and Spaw counts them for every North American number over the last 90 days.

## What Spaw answers

`complaints_90d` is the number of complaints naming the number in the last 90 days and `complaints_last_at` the date of the latest. Both come from the dataset `us-complaint-reports`, installed once a day, with the consumer's own location dropped when the file is read. `complaints_90d` answers 0 when nobody complained, and null outside the North American plan or before the first sync.

Three or more complaints, filed on at least two different days within the 90 days, raise the [`reported_unwanted_calls`](/docs/signals/phone/reported_unwanted_calls) signal, +20 on the risk score. The two-day rule keeps one person filing three times in an afternoon from counting as a pattern. It is not a default block signal of the [SMS policy](/glossary/sms-policy), and +20 is within the default ceiling of 60, so on its own it never refuses a number.

## What the counts are not

Three statements go with every complaint figure Spaw shows:

- They are not the Do Not Call Registry, which lists consumers' own numbers. Spaw does not check the registry, and `ok_to_send` is not a do-not-call scrub.
- They say nothing about whether you may call or text a number.
- They are unverified, and caller ID is often spoofed, so a number can collect complaints without its holder having placed any call. That is why the weight is small.

The counts name nobody. Spaw does no reverse lookup, has no caller name for any number, and publishes no complaint detail about an individual number: only the count and the latest date reach an answer.

## The figures

In the 90 days of FTC files Spaw held on 24 September 2026, the newest dated that day, 691,715 complaints filed between 26 June and 23 September 2026 named 588,360 North American numbers as the caller ID:

| Numbers named | Count | Share |
| --- | ---: | ---: |
| Named once | 540,075 | 91.8% |
| Named three or more times on two or more days (scores `reported_unwanted_calls`) | 9,301 | 1.6% |
| Toll-free numbers (800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877, 888), all | 72,715 | 12.4% |
| Toll-free numbers among the 9,301 | 4,584 | 49.3% |

Of the 646,612 complaints that answered the question, 73.6% were marked as a recorded message or robocall. These are shares of what consumers reported, not of calls placed. The [phone statistics](/statistics/phone) page re-measures the complaints weekly and places the reported US numbers by the holder NANPA assigned their block to, never the network that carried a call or serves the number today; the phone facts page for [the United States](/tools/phone-number-lookup/countries/us) describes the numbering plan they sit in.

Reference: https://spaw.co/glossary/unwanted-call-complaints