compliance
National DNC Registry
A US government list of phone numbers whose owners asked not to receive telemarketing calls, which marketers must scrub their lists against regularly.
The National Do Not Call Registry is a US government list of phone numbers whose owners have said they do not want telemarketing calls. If a person has added their number, most sales calls to it are off-limits unless you have an established business relationship with them or their direct, recent permission. The registry is meant to be permanent for the consumer, so a number stays on it until they choose to remove it.
Marketers do not get the full list to download freely. You register as a caller, pay for the area codes you intend to call, and scrub your lead list against the registry before dialing. Because numbers are added every day, a one-time scrub goes stale fast, so you re-scrub on a regular schedule. Calling a registered number without a valid exemption is one of the most common and most expensive ways an operation lands in trouble.
How it fits with other DNC lists
This national list is separate from your own internal dnc, which holds people who asked you specifically to stop, and from a state dnc list, which some states maintain on top of the federal one. You generally need to honor all three. In VICIdial you track suppressions in its dnc tables and load the scrubbed result as a dnc list. Once loaded, the dialer skips any number that matches, so the lists do their work automatically rather than relying on an agent to spot a flagged number.
The registry is run by the ftc, and violations are also pursued under the tcpa, so a single bad call can draw attention from more than one direction. This is a practical summary, not legal advice. Scrub before every campaign, keep dated proof of each scrub on file, and never assume a number is still safe just because it came back clean last month.
Related terms
DNC (do not call)
DNC (do not call) is a list of numbers VICIdial must never dial — people who opted out or are legally off-limits — checked before every outbound call.
DNC list
A Do Not Call list of phone numbers that should never be dialed, checked automatically before VICIdial places a call to protect you legally.
FTC
The FTC is a US agency that enforces consumer-protection rules for telemarketing, including the Telemarketing Sales Rule and parts of the national Do Not Call list.
Internal DNC
A system-wide Do Not Call list inside VICIdial that blocks a number across every campaign on the dialer, not just one.
State DNC list
A do-not-call list kept by an individual US state, which marketers must honor in addition to the federal registry when calling residents of that state.
TCPA
The TCPA is a US law restricting automated calls and texts, requiring consent before dialing cell phones with autodialers and limiting when and how often you may call.