Over 150,000 number misuse complaints in 2024
Year of issue 2025
Date of issue 2025.01.15
The Bundesnetzagentur has published its latest figures on number misuse. In 2024 it received a total of 154,624 complaints. In the previous year, this figure was 143,061 complaints. Thus the number of annual complaints remains high.
"The high number of complaints shows that, again in 2024, many members of the public have been victims of number misuse,"
said Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur. "We are committed to combating this misuse and protecting consumers against financial harm."
Many complaints about text messages
As in the previous year, a large number of complaints in 2024 focused on unsolicited SMS and Messenger messages. At around 60% of all complaints, this sector received the most complaints by far. The remainder of the complaints were again very diverse in 2024. These included automatic recorded messages, nuisance calls, call queues subject to charge, fake pop-up error messages, fake hotlines and number manipulation.
Consumer protection measures
As part of its efforts to combat number misuse, the Bundesnetzagentur cut off around 6,500 telephone numbers in 2024. This prevents any further technical use of the telephone numbers for purposes of misuse. An order to disconnect numbers is made primarily in those cases where the consumer has complained about unsolicited text messages received by SMS or Messenger. These were often cases, for example, where an impostor posed as a relative and requested money.
The Bundesnetzagentur has issued bans for around 1,100 numbers on issuing invoices for unlawful costs or demanding collection of such payments. These costs were incurred, for example, when impostors generated connections subject to charge by hacking routers or telephone systems and through this generated unlawful costs for the consumer.
Notifying number misuse
In order to pursue number misuse, the Bundesnetzagentur is dependent on the consumer providing information. To facilitate submitting a complaint, the Bundesnetzagentur provides several different online forms on its website, which have been adapted for different possible scenarios.
The online forms and further information on number misuse are available (in German) at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/aergermitrufnummern.
All measures taken by the Bundesnetzagentur are published on a regular basis at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/massnahmenliste .