Complaints about unwanted telemarketing calls have dropped for the third straight year, the Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday. Reports of such calls have fallen by over 50 percent versus 2021, according to the FTC — a decline that could be thanks in no small part to stepped-up government efforts to fight irritating telemarketing and phone scams.

There were about 33,000 fewer unwanted call complaints during the 2024 fiscal year versus the year prior, writes the FTC. The drop affected all sorts of unwanted calls, although the agency writes that reports about debt reduction calls had jumped “more than 85 percent from last year.”

FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Sam Levine said that while illegal calls are still “a scourge,” he credited “the FTC’s strategy to pursue upstream players and equip the agency to confront emerging threats” with the reduction in complaints.