How to File a Complaint with the FTC

Filing a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission is the primary mechanism through which consumers and businesses report fraud, deceptive practices, identity theft, and anticompetitive conduct to a federal law enforcement agency. The FTC does not resolve individual disputes, but every complaint submitted enters a law enforcement database that shapes agency priorities and supports investigations. Understanding how the process works, what it covers, and where its limits lie helps filers set accurate expectations and direct reports to the right channel.

Definition and scope

A complaint filed with the FTC is a formal submission of information about a potential violation of laws the agency enforces — including the FTC Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the CAN-SPAM Act, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, and the Do Not Call provisions, among others. The FTC's complaint intake system, ReportFraud.ftc.gov, serves as the public portal for consumer submissions in the United States.

The scope of conduct the FTC will accept complaints about is broad. The agency covers unfair or deceptive acts in commerce, identity theft, robocalls, online scams, misleading advertising, data privacy violations, and anticompetitive mergers or business practices. A detailed breakdown of the agency's subject-matter authority is available through the key dimensions and scopes of the FTC overview on this site.

Complaints do not trigger automatic investigation of the reported party. Instead, they feed into the FTC Consumer Sentinel Network, a secure, law enforcement-only database accessible to more than 2,800 federal, state, local, and international agencies (FTC Consumer Sentinel Network, FTC.gov). When complaint volume against a specific entity reaches a threshold that indicates a pattern, the agency and partner agencies can open formal inquiries.

How it works

The complaint process follows a structured sequence:

1. Navigate to the intake portal. The FTC directs all consumer complaints through ReportFraud.ftc.gov. A separate portal, IdentityTheft.gov, handles identity theft reports specifically and generates a personalized recovery plan.
2. Select the complaint category. The portal presents category options — scams, unwanted calls, identity theft, credit and debt issues, online shopping, and others. Selecting the correct category routes the complaint to the most relevant enforcement teams and partner agencies.
3. Provide identifying details about the reported party. Filers enter the name, website, phone number, or mailing address of the entity or individual being reported. The more specific the identifying information, the more actionable the complaint record becomes.
4. Describe the conduct. Filers describe what happened, including dates, dollar amounts lost, and how contact was initiated. Uploading supporting documents — receipts, screenshots, contracts — is optional but strengthens the record.
5. Submit contact information. Providing a name and email is optional for most complaint types. Identity theft complaints require more detail to generate a recovery plan.
6. Receive a reference number. After submission, filers receive a confirmation number. The FTC does not provide case-specific updates to individual filers.

Antitrust and competition complaints — such as those involving merger conduct or price-fixing — follow a different path. Those submissions are directed to the FTC Bureau of Competition and may require more detailed documentation about market structure and conduct.

Common scenarios

The FTC receives tens of millions of reports annually. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book published annually identifies the dominant complaint categories by volume.

Fraud and imposter scams represent the largest single category. These include business email compromise, government impersonation, tech support scams, and lottery fraud.

Identity theft reports are categorized separately and routed to the dedicated IdentityTheft.gov recovery system. The FTC's identity theft program is covered in the FTC identity theft program section of this site.

Do Not Call violations — unwanted telemarketing calls to numbers registered on the National Do Not Call Registry — are submitted through the same ReportFraud portal and cross-referenced with the FTC Do Not Call Registry.

Negative option and subscription traps — where consumers are enrolled in recurring charges without clear consent — are an enforcement priority. The FTC's Negative Option Rule governs this conduct, and complaints in this category directly inform enforcement referrals.

Data security failures — where a business exposed personal information through inadequate safeguards — are actionable under the FTC's authority described in the FTC data security enforcement overview.

Decision boundaries

The FTC complaint system is not a substitute for every type of consumer or legal redress. Knowing where the FTC's jurisdiction ends prevents misdirected filings.

FTC vs. other federal agencies. The FTC does not handle complaints about banks, credit unions, or federally regulated financial institutions — those fall under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB, consumerfinance.gov) or the relevant banking regulator. Airlines are handled by the Department of Transportation. Securities fraud falls to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

FTC vs. state attorneys general. Intrastate consumer fraud — where both the business and the consumer are in the same state — may be more efficiently addressed through a state attorney general office, which can pursue restitution for individual consumers. The FTC's penalties and remedies authority focuses on civil penalties and injunctive relief at a systemic level, not individual refunds.

FTC vs. private legal action. The FTC Act does not provide a private right of action. A consumer harmed by a deceptive business practice cannot sue under the FTC Act directly; that consumer's remedy lies in state consumer protection statutes or common law claims.

What the FTC will not do with a complaint. The agency will not mediate disputes, represent individual filers, return money lost to fraud (outside of established redress programs), or notify the filer of investigation outcomes. The complaint becomes data — useful to enforcement at scale, not to individual case resolution.

For a comprehensive reference on FTC functions and complaint-adjacent processes, the FTC Authority homepage provides a structured entry point into the agency's full operational scope.