47 state AGs want to stop scammers from buying phone numbers

The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of attorneys general pushes for phone companies that buy and resell numbers in North America to track and disclose who’s using their numbers.

Consumer alerts

July 9, 2026

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A bipartisan coalition of the attorneys general from nearly every state in the United States is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to do more to thwart scam robocalls and robotexts. Specifically, the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force wants the FCC to make it more difficult for scammers to buy or use phone numbers they would use to defraud people, National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) said in a July 2026 letter.

Since 2021, the national focus has been on stopping bad guys from spoofing phone numbers to trick people, either by making it look like the call is coming from a different number or by using an impostor Caller ID. The anti-spoofing efforts haven’t been effective enough to prevent millions of people from losing billions of dollars every year. The volume of scam and telemarketing calls has hovered around 2 billion a month for years. That’s not counting texts.

Now, the attorneys general want phone companies that buy and resell numbers in North America to track and disclose who’s using their numbers. Other goals: Requiring companies that buy and sell numbers to submit reports so law enforcement can better track scam robocalls, and prohibiting companies from selling numbers to operations or individuals that aren’t associated with a calling and texting service.

‘Number cycling’

The coalition also wants the FCC to ban “number cycling,” which occurs when someone or some entity buys tons of phone numbers and uses them maybe once an hour or once a day to evade spam detection software. When they run out of numbers to use to make calls, they start at the beginning again.

The letter to the FCC, in the form of comments about proposed new rules, was led by the attorneys general of Colorado, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania. It was signed by the attorneys general in 47 states and in American Samoa and Washington D.C. Only the AGs in Florida, Montana and Texas didn’t sign on.

Congress passed legislation in 2019 that took effect in 2021 aimed at squashing scam and spam robocalls. But regulators haven’t done enough to hold phone companies accountable when less than half of phone companies have installed software to detect spoofed calls on their entire network. And phone companies haven’t done enough to offer customers free services to protect themselves from unwanted calls.