Robocalls, spoofing, and what the law actually says.

Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA)

The core federal statute is 47 U.S.C. § 227. It is not a general "no junk calls" law — it is a set of specific prohibitions, and knowing which one applies to your situation is what determines whether you have something worth pursuing.

• Autodialed or prerecorded calls and texts to a mobile number require your consent — and the caller, not you, carries the burden of proving they had it.
• Statutory damages run $500 per violation, and a court may treble that to $1,500 where the violation was willful or knowing.
• The Do-Not-Call provisions are separate: more than one telemarketing call in a 12-month period to a registered number is independently actionable.
• Callers must also keep an internal do-not-call list, a written policy and trained staff. This is the obligation most often broken — and the easiest to prove once you have asked them to stop.
• Claims generally run on a four-year federal limitations period.

The National Do Not Call Registry

The registry and the internal do-not-call obligations are two different things, and the second one matters more than most people realise.

• Registration is permanent and free at donotcall.gov. A number generally must be listed 31 days before liability attaches.
• Registry protection is aimed at residential subscribers — and the FCC has treated wireless numbers as presumptively residential.
• A prior business relationship can suspend the protection for a limited window — but asking a company to stop ends that relationship immediately.
• Separately, every company that makes telemarketing calls must keep its own internal do-not-call list, maintain a written policy, and train its staff on it. That obligation applies whether or not you are on the national registry — and it is triggered the moment you say stop. It is also the obligation most often broken outright.

Spoofed caller ID is not a dead end

Neighbour spoofing — a call that appears to come from your own area code and prefix — is designed to get you to answer, and it makes the number itself worthless as identification. That is not the same as the call being untraceable.

Calls carry authentication data as they cross carrier networks, and the industry operates a traceback process that can walk a call back to the carrier that originated it. Those tools sit with carriers and regulators rather than with consumers, which is why complaints to the FCC and FTC genuinely matter — they feed enforcement.

For a private claim, though, the faster route is almost always the warm transfer. Offshore floors are usually qualifying you for a domestic buyer. The moment a live agent transfers you to a real company, that company is identifiable, reachable, and — critically — may be legally responsible for the call even though it never dialled your number.

Why the company that benefits can be liable

This is the part that surprises people, and it is why the company behind a campaign can be held accountable at all.

A business can be responsible for calls placed on its behalf under ordinary agency principles — where it authorised the campaign, where it held the caller out as acting for it, or where it ratified the conduct by accepting the benefit while knowing, or deliberately avoiding knowing, how the leads were generated.

In practice, ratification is often the most provable route. A company that keeps buying leads at prices that could not support compliant generation, that receives complaints and keeps buying, and that never audits its vendor, has a difficult story to tell. Its own lead-purchase contract — with its compliance warranties and its indemnity clauses — is frequently the best evidence that it foresaw exactly this.

What a call log needs to be worth anything

If you take one thing from this page, take this list. Reconstructing it later is usually impossible.

• Date and time of every call, and the number it came from
• Whether you heard a recording or an artificial voice, or a live person
• What was said, what was being sold, and any company name the agent gave
• Any transfer — and the name, callback number and address of whoever you were transferred to
• Every time you asked them to stop: the date, how you said it, the exact words, and proof
• Whether the number is on the national registry, and the date you registered it
• Whether you have ever done business with, or enquired of, the company being pitched
• Voicemail audio saved as files, not left in the app

Recording the call

Recording rules are set by state law and they are criminal statutes, not technicalities. Some states require only one party to consent — meaning you may record your own call. Others require everyone on the line to consent, and interstate calls raise the question of which state's rule governs.

We confirm the rule for your state before we ever suggest recording anything, and you should not start recording on the assumption that it is fine.

Keep reading

• Spam Texts — The same statute, applied to SMS.
• Data Broker Removal — Cut off the listings feeding the calls.
• How It Works — From evidence file to demand.