Volume of complaints about number misuse remains high
Year of issue 2026
Date of issue 2026.02.09
The Bundesnetzagentur received a total of 85,158 complaints about number misuse in 2025, thus the volume of complaints remains high.
“We are continuing to protect consumers effectively against number misuse. The latest figures clearly show that consumers still need a lot of support from us. In turn, we rely on information from consumers to pursue and combat problems with numbers,”
said Klaus Müller, President of the Bundesnetzagentur.
High volume of complaints
Most of the complaints from consumers in 2025 were about spam messages and unwanted calling behaviour. The Bundesnetzagentur has had several thousand numbers disconnected in the past few years, helping to cut down the number of complaints about family emergency scams via text messages and messaging apps. The other complaint issues included automatic recorded messages, expensive call queues, router hacking, fake hotlines and number manipulation.
Last year the Bundesnetzagentur had about 6,200 telephone numbers cut off, making it technically impossible to continue misusing the numbers. Bans on billing and collecting unlawfully incurred costs were issued for more than 2,000 numbers, thus protecting consumers against financial damage.
Support from consumers – online forms for swift action
The Bundesnetzagentur relies on information from consumers to be able to respond quickly and flexibly to number misuse. Consumers can report problems with numbers to the Bundesnetzagentur. It is important for the Bundesnetzagentur to have the right information about a case of misuse from the start, which is why it provides special online forms for various different scenarios on its website.
Reporting number misuse
The online forms and further information on number misuse are available on the Bundesnetzagentur’s website at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/aergermitrufnummern (in German).
A regularly updated list of all measures taken by the Bundesnetzagentur is available at www.bundesnetzagentur.de/massnahmenliste(in German).