Do-not-call registry

What it is

Most jurisdictions maintain a register of numbers that must not receive unsolicited marketing calls. The names differ: the National Do Not Call Registry in the United States, the Telephone Preference Service in the United Kingdom, Do Not Disturb preferences in India, the Do Not Call Registry in Singapore and the Do Not Call Register in Australia. The mechanics are similar. Before a marketing call, the number is checked against the register; consent from the individual usually overrides the listing; and the business must keep its own internal list of people who have asked it directly not to call.

Exemptions vary by country (existing-customer relationships, charities, research calls, transactional messages) and are narrower than vendors tend to assume.

Why it matters when buying

A voice agent can dial thousands of numbers an hour, so a missed scrub is a mass violation, not a single complaint. The platform must scrub against the right register for each number's country, within the register's freshness window, and must capture spoken and keypad opt-outs into your internal list in real time. In India the scrub is part of the operator-run ledger system; in the United States and the United Kingdom it is a subscription and a process. Informational only; the registers and their rules are linked in the sources.

What to ask

Ask which registers the platform scrubs against, how often the list is refreshed and where the evidence of each scrub is kept. Ask how a caller's "stop calling me" is captured mid-call and how quickly it takes effect across campaigns. Ask how exemptions are configured and who is accountable when one is misapplied.