The Enquirer's Just Askin' series aims to answer the questions that no one seems to have an answer for, not even Google.

If you get 10 phone calls in one day, chances are at least a few are spam calls.

Unwanted calls, including illegal and spoofed robocalls, are the Federal Communication Commission's No. 1 consumer complaint. Top reported scams include those related to medical care and prescriptions, imposters, reducing debt, utilities and other money-soliciting tactics used by bad actors.

And if anyone's fed up, it's Ohioans. For fiscal year 2023, Ohio ranked No. 2 in the U.S. for do-not-call complaints per capita - about 843 complaints per 100,000 residents. That's 111,687 total complaints filed in Ohio from July 2023 to June 2024.

The founding of the National Do Not Call registry in 2003 gave consumers some sense of relief. Today, more than 221 million phone numbers are registered.

So, why are you still getting spam calls? An FTC staffer breaks it down.

The no-call list doesn't physically stop calls from entering the phone network. Laws can be passed, but that doesn't mean everyone plays by the rules, according to Will Maxson, an assistant director with the FTC's division of marketing practices.

The American telephone network in the past 20 years has shifted from the public switched telephone network to a fiberoptic Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) network, which Maxson says is essentially the marriage of the internet and telephone networks.

VoIP provides a lot of advantages for any phone user, but it's changed the landscape to make it easier for illegitimate, bad actors to make illegal calls at high volumes.

The technology makes it possible to make long-distance calls for free, but it also allows people to make more calls, more easily, for less money anywhere in the world. That was more difficult in the days of the old copper phone network.

"VoIP calling allows you to make an extremely large volume of calls very easily with very little front-end investment," Maxson said. "If you have a computer and internet connection, you have the ability to go online and make a large number of calls for very little cost."

Complaints of unwanted calls reached their peak in 2017 and 2018 after robocalls became more prevalent around 2010. Since then, complaints have tapered as enforcement has made a concerted effort to locate and stop bad actors, Maxson said.

The FTC and the Federal Communications Commission both investigate spam calls.

To date, the FTC has brought 151 enforcement actions against companies and telemarketers for Do Not Call, robocall, spoofed caller ID, and assisting and facilitating violations against more than 1,000 defendants. Suits resulted in $178 million in civil penalties and $112 million in restitution or disgorgement. All but four enforcement actions have been resolved.

Those cases include actions taken against phone providers, companies the FTC alleged was assisting and facilitating illegal telemarketing calls using their own VoIP platforms.

There are some scenarios in which it's legal to get calls while on the no-call list. For example, companies that you have an established relationship with can still call you.

If you're getting calls you don't want, file a complaint, Maxson said.

"Those complaints are really the backbone around enforcement cases, and it helps us know what's going on and identify bad actors," Maxson said.

Here are some tips for protecting yourself against robocalls and spam calls, and to prevent getting scammed by bad actors:

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