‘Imposter Calls’ Top FTC Complaint List

You pick up the phone and hear a recorded message, purporting to be from the IRS. For a moment, you’re worried, but eventually, you think “This seems like a scam.”

That’s because it is a scam, and if you’ve received a call like that, you’re likely among the nearly 287,000 Americans who complained to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) this year about so-called “imposter calls.”

The FTC this week released its National Do Not Call Registry Data Book, saying that more than 2.5 million people signed up for the registry this year — allowing them to avoid telemarketers — bringing the amount of phone numbers on the Do Not Call list to more than 246 million.

The Data Book also found that consumer reports about imposter calls topped its list of complaints, including both live calls and robocalls in which callers pose as IRS or Social Security officials, legitimate businesses, or even people they know.

As PYMNTS noted earlier this year, consumer wariness about scams and robocalls has caused them to miss important calls, which impacts businesses as well as consumers since businesses may be trying to contact customers with information about critical transactions.

“Advancements in technology have increased the number of illegal telemarketing calls made to telephone numbers on the registry,” the FTC said in a news release. “For example, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology allows callers, including law-breakers, to make higher volumes of calls inexpensively from anywhere in the world.”

The FTC brought its first two cases against interconnected VoIP service providers for their role in abusive telemarketing calls in 2019 and 2020, and another case this year against VoIP service provider VOIP Terminator, the release stated.

The use of technological advancements to further fraudulent endeavors is not just confined to phone scams, as PYMNTS has reported.

Identity fraud has grown in sophistication as fraudsters use techniques such as artificial intelligence (AI) to fool the automated verification systems at banks and businesses. They’re also using deepfake voices and video to dupe bank employees into changing account numbers and making transfers, something which can be extremely tough to reverse once initiated.