Federal No Call List: Allowed Calls, Reporting, and Penalties

The federal Do Not Call list is a free registry run by the Federal Trade Commission that blocks most telemarketing calls to any personal landline or cell phone you add to it. You sign up once at donotcall.gov or by calling 1-888-382-1222 from the phone you want covered, and the registration never expires.¹ Business lines are not eligible.

Registering online takes a phone number and an email address. The system sends a confirmation link to that email, and you have 72 hours to click it or the registration doesn’t go through. Registering by phone skips the email step and finishes through the automated prompts.¹ If you want to confirm a number is already listed, check from that same line at either the website or the toll-free number.

What Happens After You Sign Up

Your number appears on the registry the day after you submit it, but telemarketers get up to 31 days to update their call lists.¹ After that window, a sales call from a company with no other legal basis to reach you is a potential violation.

Registration is permanent. The FTC only removes a number if it gets disconnected and reassigned, or if you ask for it to come off.¹ There’s no need to re-register periodically, whatever forwarded emails might say.

Calls That Are Still Allowed

The list doesn’t cover every caller. Political campaigns, charities, telephone surveyors, debt collectors, and companies delivering informational messages about a service you already use can all still call you legally.

Companies You’ve Done Business With

A company you recently purchased from or paid can keep calling you for up to 540 days (about 18 months) after that transaction. If you only inquired or applied but didn’t buy, the window is 90 days.²

You can shut off those calls too. Once you tell the company to stop, it must honor that request no matter how recent the business relationship. A call after your stop request exposes the company to fines of up to $53,088.³

What the List Won’t Stop

The registry only works against callers who follow the law. Scammers running illegal robocall operations don’t check the list before dialing, and they generate most of the unwanted calls people receive today. Signing up will noticeably cut the volume of legitimate telemarketing, which makes the remaining calls easier to spot as the scams they usually are, but it won’t silence the spoofed car warranty and utility shutoff calls.

Reporting a Violation

If sales calls keep coming more than 31 days after you registered, and the caller isn’t in one of the exempt categories, file a complaint at donotcall.gov. The form asks for:

The number that received the call
The caller’s number as it appeared on caller ID
The date and time of the call
Any company name mentioned during the call

File the report even if you think the caller ID was spoofed. The FTC uses that data to identify patterns, build enforcement cases, and help carriers refine their call-blocking systems.¹ If a phone scam cost you money, file a separate report at reportfraud.ftc.gov with the fuller details investigators need.

Penalties and Your Right to Sue

Two agencies enforce telemarketing rules: the FTC under the Telemarketing Sales Rule, and the FCC under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The FTC can impose civil penalties of up to $53,088 per illegal call.⁴ The figure adjusts for inflation each year, though the 2026 adjustment was paused and the 2025 amount still applies. Because the penalty is per call, a large campaign can add up to millions in liability, and the FTC regularly reaches multi-million-dollar settlements with repeat offenders.

You don’t have to wait for the government. The TCPA lets you sue a telemarketer yourself. If the same company makes more than one illegal call to you within 12 months, you can file suit in state court and recover up to $500 per violation. A court that finds the conduct willful can triple that to $1,500 per call, with no cap on the total.⁵ Some states add penalties on top.

Companies do have one defense. If a business can show it built and followed reasonable procedures to avoid calling registered numbers and one still slipped through, a court may accept that. A company that never checks the registry at all won’t get far with the argument.⁵

1
Federal Trade Commission. National Do Not Call Registry FAQs
2
eCFR. 16 CFR 310.2 – Definitions
3
Federal Trade Commission. QA for Telemarketers and Sellers About DNC Provisions in TSR
4
Federal Trade Commission. FTC Publishes Inflation-Adjusted Civil Penalty Amounts
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment