Record

How a number gets on the list.

A block list earns trust by showing its work. This page documents the rules a number must satisfy before we publish it, the rules that take it back off, and the language we use to describe what we know — so the things we report look like the things we can prove.

The corroboration threshold

A single user reporting a number is a flag. Useful, but not enough. A number is promoted from the pending queue to the public block list only when three distinct verified accounts report the same number within a rolling 14-day window, and:

• No two of those reports share a device fingerprint — reinstalling the app generates a new UUID, but a single device can't carry two accounts to the threshold.
• No two of those reports come from the same IP /24 subnet within the window — a single network can't manufacture corroboration.
• The reporting accounts are not flagged for prior griefing or coordinated abuse.

The full IP is discarded after 30 days. We keep the /24 because that is the smallest unit that resists low-effort coordination without logging anything that could re-identify a specific user.

The FTC bypass

The FTC National Do Not Call Registry complaint feed is government work product, already verified before we see it. We treat a single FTC complaint as a corroborated signal on its own — the user-account threshold doesn't apply when the FTC has done the verification. Numbers ingested this way carry an "FTC-attributed" badge so the source is visible.

Removal: activity decay and "likely retired"

Spam numbers churn. A number that was hammering thousands of phones this month often goes silent the next, because the campaign rotated. Carrying dead weight on the block list dilutes its value and can strand a future legitimate owner of a recycled number.

We mark a number likely retired when reports about it drop to zero across 100+ active users for 30 or more days. The number stays on the block list — recycled-number protection — but the campaign page shifts language to past tense and the number falls off the trending view. If new flags arrive after that, the number is promoted back to active.

Copy discipline

Three terms, three meanings, never blurred:

• Reported by N users. A factual statement about what was submitted. Not a claim about what the number is.
• Likely retired. An inference from activity decay. We use this only when no public enforcement source confirms the takedown.
• Attributed takedown. Reserved for the case where a public enforcement source — FCC press release, court filing, ITG traceback — confirms the takedown. The source is linked on the campaign page.

We never call a number "spam" or "scam" with the certainty of a verdict. The labels we ship are the labels we can defend on the record.

Delist and appeal

If a number you own is on the list and you believe it was wrongly flagged, the public form is at /report-an-error. We respond within 10 business days. The full criteria, evidence requirements, and appeal path live in our Terms of Service §8.