FTC and FCC: two complaint sources
We import phone-number records from two federal datasets. Both contain information supplied by consumers; neither agency verifies the facts alleged in these datasets. A listing means a complaint was filed—not that the agency investigated or found a scam.
- FTC Do Not Call reported calls
The Federal Trade Commission’s feed supplies reported numbers, complaint dates, call subjects, and recorded-message or robocall indicators. PhoneYa uses available records to display complaint totals and related context.
- FCC consumer complaints
We import the Unwanted Calls category from the Federal Communications Commission’s consumer dataset. Records can identify a caller-ID number or an advertiser/business number, plus a call type and filing date. Those two number fields do not necessarily identify the same party.
Sources: FTC · FCC / Data.gov
Community reports: what people say happened
People can describe a call or text, select a category, and add an available call outcome. These accounts can explain details a complaint count cannot: what the caller claimed, what they requested, or whether the call was silent.
Submissions pass through validation, duplicate checks, text sanitization, and automated moderation. Reports classified as clean can publish immediately. Uncertain, violating, or failed moderation results are held for review. Screening is a publication safeguard, not independent verification that an account is true.
Emoji reactions and report votes are feedback. They should not be read as additional verified incidents or added to report counts as separate confirmations.
Live sensors: observations from research calls
PhoneYa’s research phone numbers receive inbound calls. When a sensor is enabled, an AI call screener can answer and generate a structured account of the conversation. A human review action is required to publish that account as a labeled screener observation.
The reviewer can edit the summary, category, and outcome. An observation may describe a claimed organization, the purpose of the call, or requests for money or sensitive information. It records what was observed in that conversation—not proof that a claimed identity was genuine or that every call displaying that number is the same.
Raw transcripts and technical webhook records are private review material. Scheduled maintenance is configured to scrub or delete those records once they are more than 30 days old; published summaries can remain.
Carrier and area-code details: context, not identity
Where available, Telnyx Number Lookup supplies carrier, line type, and portability information, sometimes including a registered city or state. PhoneYa caches these results and uses background refreshes with availability and usage limits. They are not a live check of every incoming call.
Area-code labels come from lookup tables maintained in the site. NANPA publishes the underlying numbering-plan references. An area code describes a number’s geographic assignment or service type; it does not locate the person calling you. A mobile, landline, or VoIP label does not establish whether the call is legitimate.
Reported names: a label someone else supplied
An optional Eyecon integration, accessed through a third-party API, can return a crowd-sourced caller-name label. Available names are cached and displayed as unverified. Not every number has a result, and missing data does not establish that a number is safe or suspicious.
The public caller-name panel displays a name, not a profile photo. Labels may be inaccurate, outdated, or associated with a previous holder of the number. Treat them as a clue to check—not an identity document or permission to contact a private person.
Lookup activity measures attention—not calls
Lookup counters summarize distinct browser sessions visiting a number page over the displayed time window. Repeat visits are deduplicated, and traffic identified as bots is excluded. These are estimates of search activity, not a verified headcount of people receiving calls.
A surge compares recent activity with the number’s prior baseline and requires activity across multiple sessions and networks. News coverage, a shared link, or curiosity can also attract searches. A spike alone does not prove an active scam.
This system stores hashed session, IP, and network identifiers rather than raw IP addresses. Raw lookup events are scheduled for deletion after 30 days; aggregate daily counts are retained.
Freshness has more than one clock
Government imports run through scheduled jobs with catch-up handling. A scheduled run is not a promise that every record is current: agency publication delays, processing limits, missed jobs, and cached pages can create gaps.
The time PhoneYa imports or updates a record is different from its complaint filing date—and a filing date can differ from the date of the call itself. Read any source-specific dates shown on the number page. Our stored totals are not a guarantee of an agency’s complete history.
Older information may describe a previous number holder. No reports means we have no published reports to show; it does not mean a caller has been checked and cleared.
If something looks wrong
Use a report’s flag control to raise a content concern. If information about your number should be reviewed, use Request Removal on that number’s page. Explain the specific problem without posting account numbers, addresses, or other private information publicly.
A PhoneYa submission is separate from a complaint to the FTC or FCC. It does not automatically file a government report or resolve a dispute with a carrier.