At midnight on October 1, 2025, the U.S. government shut down. Lawmakers were unable to agree on appropriations legislation to provide continued funding for the 2026 fiscal year. This shutdown is the first since 2019.
Government shutdowns can cause disruption, as some federal workers are expected to come to work without pay temporarily, while others are sent home. In the past, shutdowns have also included the closure of essential services such as national parks.
With the government not operating normally right now, many are concerned with big-ticket issues. This includes things like whether TSA agents and air traffic controllers will continue working. However, these high-profile services aren’t the only ones the government offers.
In fact, the government does a lot that many people don’t even realize, or stop to think about, until the government stops doing it.
One of these essential services has been temporarily shut down, and consumers will suffer as a result.
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This critical government service is quietly shut down
The federal government serves many roles, including offering various consumer protection tools. One of those is the Do Not Call Registry.
The National Do Not Call Registry offers the option of registering your home or cell phone number to prevent spam calls.
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While being on the registry doesn’t block calls, it does provide registered telemarketers with information on numbers that they are not allowed to call. Telemarketers are not allowed to contact people who are on the list, and can face consequences if they do.
Unfortunately, it is not currently possible to sign up for the Do Not Call registry because of the government shutdown.
Do Not Call Registry not operating during government shutdown
When you visit www.donotcall.gov, you are no longer provided with a link to start the process of adding your telephone number to the registry. Instead, this is the message that you receive:
“Due to the government shutdown, we are unable to offer this website service at this time. Information about unwanted calls can be found on the FTC’s website at: National Do Not Call Registry | Consumer Information. We will resume normal operations when the government is funded.”
This means that if you are getting spam sales calls and haven’t yet registered your number, or if you have a phone number that you were hoping to register to make sure you don’t get a lot of unauthorized calls, you are currently out of luck until the government decides to open back up again.
Do Not Call registry flies under the radar, but is essential
The Do Not Call registry shutdown isn’t getting a lot of attention, but there is no doubt that it’s closure will affect consumers in a very real way.
According to the FTC, the registry is very widely used by consumers. A press release from 2024 stated:
“In the last fiscal year, more than 4.2 million people signed up with the DNC Registry, bringing the total to more than 253 million actively registered phone numbers, up from 249.5 million at the end of FY 2023.”
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The FTC also received 1.1 million complaints about robocalls. While this is a big decline from the 3.4 million received in 2021, that’s still a tremendous amount of unwanted calls people have had to deal with.
And sadly, now consumers won’t be able to get any help from the government, as it’s not just the Do Not Call registry that’s down, but the FTC’s fraud reporting website as well. Visiting https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ leads to the same message as the Do Not Call Registry.
Until the government reopens, consumers will just have to cope with spam calls and phone scams entirely on their own.
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