Key Takeaways
- Federal Regulation F caps most debt collectors at 7 calls per 7 days about a single debt, and bars them from calling again for 7 days after you've already spoken about it.
- Some states and cities go further: New York City's new SHIELD Rule (effective September 1, 2026) caps ALL contact - calls, texts, and emails combined - at just 3 per 7 days, and Massachusetts effectively limits collectors to 2 completed calls a week.
- Collectors can text and email you now, but only with your consent, capped at the same 7-in-7 frequency, and with an easy opt-out on every message - and a growing number of 'collection' texts with payment links are scams, not real collectors.
- There's no federal ban on medical debt showing up on your credit report - a court struck down the CFPB's 2025 rule in July 2025. Credit bureaus still won't report medical debt until it's over 12 months delinquent, remove it once paid, and skip it entirely if it's under $500 - and roughly 15 states now have their own, separate bans that don't depend on the federal rule.
- Debt doesn't disappear once it's old, but a collector's right to sue you over it does, once your state's statute of limitations runs out - typically 3 to 6 years, depending on the state and debt type.
- Making even a small payment, or promising to pay in writing, can restart that clock - so know your state's rules before you respond to an old debt.
- With the CFPB's enforcement capacity reduced in 2026 (nine debt-collection enforcement actions in 2025, down from sixteen in 2024), state attorneys general and the FTC have become the more active watchdogs - file complaints with both.
One of the worst forms of creditor harassment is relentless debt collection calls. For some people, the calls become so frequent that they consider changing their phone number just to make them stop. The good news: federal law spells out exactly how often a collector is allowed to contact you, what they can say, and what happens if they cross the line — and in 2026, a handful of states and cities have gone even further than the federal rules.
The Rulebook Changed: Meet Regulation F
For decades, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) set the broad rules — no calls before 8 a.m. or after 9 p.m., no abusive language, no contacting you at a number or time you’ve said is off-limits. Those protections still stand. But since 2021, the CFPB’s Regulation F (12 CFR Part 1006) has layered on specific, numeric limits that make the FDCPA’s vague “don’t harass people” standard much easier to enforce.
The headline rule: a collector is presumed to be harassing you if they call more than 7 times within 7 consecutive days about a specific debt, or call you again within 7 days after you’ve already had a phone conversation about that debt. Cross either line and the burden shifts to the collector to prove it wasn’t harassment — a real advantage if you ever end up filing a complaint or lawsuit.
Regulation F also formally opened the door to collectors texting and emailing you, something the original 1977 FDCPA never anticipated. Collectors need your consent for a given phone number or email address, that consent has to be refreshed periodically, and every message must include an easy way to opt out. The same 7-in-7 frequency cap applies to texts as it does to calls.
Collectors can also leave a “limited-content message” — a voicemail with just their name, a callback number, and nothing that reveals you owe a debt — without triggering the fuller disclosure requirements a real collection call requires.
Some States and Cities Go Further Than the Federal Rules
Regulation F is a floor, not a ceiling. A growing number of states and cities impose tighter limits, and if you live in one, the stricter rule applies to you.
New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection adopted the “Stopping Harassment and Intimidation and Ensuring Lawful Debt” (SHIELD) Rule in February 2026, effective September 1, 2026. It replaces Regulation F’s rebuttable 7-in-7 presumption with a hard cap: no more than 3 total contact attempts — calls, texts, and emails combined — within any 7-day period, plus a 60-day deadline for a collector to produce documentation after you dispute a debt, or they have to stop collecting.
Massachusetts has had its own tighter cap for years: the state Attorney General’s debt collection regulations (940 CMR 7.00) work out to roughly 2 completed calls per week, well below the federal 7-in-7. If a collector is contacting you more than that and you live in NYC or Massachusetts, you may have a stronger claim than Regulation F alone would give you.
Beware of Scam “Debt Collection” Texts
Regulation F’s texting rules assume you’re actually dealing with a real collector — but a lot of “you have an outstanding debt, click here to pay” texts aren’t from collectors at all. I get asked about this a lot, and it’s a fast-growing scam pattern: a text that names a vague-sounding agency, creates urgency, and links to a payment page designed to harvest your card number or banking details.
Real debt collectors overwhelmingly prefer mailing you a written validation notice first, and a real one will never pressure you to pay through a link in an unsolicited text before you’ve had a chance to verify the debt. Before you click anything or pay:
- Don’t click the link. Look up the company name independently and call the number listed on its official website, not the number in the text.
- Ask for a written validation notice with the original creditor’s name, the account number, and the amount — collectors are required to provide this, and legitimate ones will.
- Check your own records first. Pull a free credit report from AnnualCreditReport.com to see whether the debt shows up at all before assuming the text is real.
If you’re ever unsure whether a message about your accounts is legitimate or a phishing attempt, the same verification habits that protect your Social Security number from identity theft apply here too — never confirm personal or financial details through a channel the other side initiated.
Medical Debt: Where It Actually Stands in 2026
If you’ve heard that medical debt can no longer hurt your credit score, that’s only partly true. The CFPB finalized a rule in January 2025 that would have wiped roughly $49 billion in medical debt off consumer credit reports nationwide, but a federal court in Texas vacated it in July 2025, ruling the CFPB had exceeded its authority under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
What still protects you federally is the credit bureaus’ own voluntary 2023 policy: no medical debt is reported until it’s been delinquent for more than 12 months, paid medical collections are removed regardless of size, and unpaid medical debt under $500 never appears at all. This matches what I found when I updated my FICO score breakdown — the same 12-month grace period applies there.
On top of that federal baseline, roughly 15 states — including California, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Virginia, and Washington — now have their own laws restricting medical debt on credit reports. These state laws don’t depend on the vacated CFPB rule to function.
There’s a real legal wrinkle worth knowing about, though. The judge who struck down the CFPB rule suggested, in a passing comment, that federal law might preempt some of these state laws too. That comment wasn’t the actual ruling and wasn’t argued in that case, so legal experts consider the state laws’ status unsettled rather than overturned — don’t assume your state’s protection has already been wiped out.
Is There a Deadline on Old Debt? Statute of Limitations by State
Debt doesn’t expire, but a creditor’s legal right to sue you over it does. Once your state’s statute of limitations passes, the debt becomes “time-barred” — collectors can still call and ask you to pay, but they can’t win a lawsuit over it. In several states, even threatening to sue on time-barred debt is itself an FDCPA violation.
The clock typically starts from your last payment or the date the account went delinquent, and most states fall in the 3-to-6-year range for credit card debt:
| State | Written Contract | Credit Card Debt |
|---|---|---|
| California (CA) | 4 years | 4 years |
| Texas (TX) | 4 years | 4 years |
| Florida (FL) | 5 years | 5 years |
| New York (NY) | 6 years | 6 years |
| Pennsylvania (PA) | 4 years | 4 years |
| Illinois (IL) | 10 years | 5 years |
| Ohio (OH) | 6 years | 6 years |
| Georgia (GA) | 6 years | 4 years |
| North Carolina (NC) | 3 years | 3 years |
| Michigan (MI) | 6 years | 6 years |
The catch: this clock can restart. Making even a small payment on an old debt, or acknowledging it in writing, can reset the limitations period in most states — sometimes turning a debt you couldn’t legally be sued over back into one you can.
Get the original delinquency date in writing before you pay or promise anything. If a collector is chasing old credit card debt specifically, my guide to negotiating down credit card debt covers when settling makes sense versus when it’s better to just let the clock run out.
Common Issues to Watch Out For
A few misconceptions come up constantly in reader questions and in forums like Reddit’s r/personalfinance, so it’s worth clearing them up directly.
“It’s not on my credit report, so I don’t need to do anything.” This is one of the most common — and costly — mistakes I see. A debt not yet showing up on your credit report doesn’t mean it isn’t real or that you’re off the hook; it can still get reported later, and letting it sit unresolved is how a manageable bill turns into a much bigger credit-score hit down the road.
Confusing federal debt with private debt. If you owe the IRS or a federal student loan, different rules apply than the FDCPA/Regulation F framework covered above — see the federal debt section below.
Assuming every “collector” contacting you is legitimate. Zombie debt (old, sold-off, or even fully paid debt that resurfaces), wrong-person mix-ups, and outright scams are all common. Always ask for written validation before paying anyone claiming you owe money.
Not documenting calls before disputing. If you plan to dispute a debt or file a complaint, keep a log of dates, times, and what was said — Regulation F’s 7-in-7 presumption only helps you if you can actually show the pattern.
How to Stop Collection Calls
- Know your rights. Abusive language, repeated calls past the 7-in-7 limit (or your state/city’s stricter cap), and threats to sue on time-barred debt are all illegal. Most states layer on additional protections — some, like Oregon, Illinois, and New York, added new medical-debt and “coerced debt” protections in 2026. Search “[your state] debt collection laws” and stick to
.govresults.
- Put it in writing. Send a written notice — by certified mail with a return receipt — telling the collector to stop calling and communicate only in writing. Here’s a template:
Your Name
Mailing Address
City, State, ZipDate
Name of Collection Agency
Mailing Address
City, State, ZipRe: Notice to Cease Contact — Case # ________ (or the date of last contact, if you don’t have a case number)
To [name on the agency’s notice]:
On [date] I received a written notice of the claimed debt, a copy of which is attached.
This is to give you notice to cease all contact with me or anyone else about this claimed debt, except through my attorney if I retain one. If you must contact me, please do so in writing only.
I look forward to your written acknowledgment that you’ve received this notice by [date two weeks out].
Sincerely,
(Signature)
Your Name
- File a complaint. With CFPB enforcement scaled back in 2026, your state Attorney General and the FTC have become the more reliably active venues for a complaint. File with both — many state AGs enforce their own, sometimes stricter, debt collection statutes, and if you’re in NYC, the DCWP now handles SHIELD Rule complaints separately.
- Record the call and ask for identification. Tell the caller upfront you’re recording (check your state’s consent-to-record rules first), and ask them to identify themselves and the agency they represent. Set up call-screening through your phone carrier to filter out calls with no caller ID.
- Sue if they cross the line. You can sue a debt collector in state or federal court within one year of the violation. Courts can award actual damages, up to $1,000 in statutory damages even without proof of financial harm, plus attorney’s fees — and a class action can recover up to $500,000 or 1% of the collector’s net worth. Winning the case doesn’t erase a debt you legitimately owe, though — it just penalizes the illegal collection tactics.
- Actually deal with the underlying debt. Stopping the calls doesn’t make the balance disappear. If the debt is legitimate and within the statute of limitations, my guide to getting out of debt walks through the avalanche and snowball payoff methods, which tend to work better once the harassment itself has stopped and you can think clearly about a plan.
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Federal Debt Follows Different Rules
Government debt works differently than private-collector debt, and the FDCPA/Regulation F framework above mostly doesn’t apply to it. If you owe the IRS, a federal student loan, or another federal debt, robocalls and autodialed texts to your cell phone about that debt don’t require your prior consent the way private-collector robocalls do.
The government’s own rules still cap contact, though: 3 robocalls or robotexts within any 30-day period per loan or debt type, only between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. your local time. You can opt out at any time by any reasonable method.
This is a completely separate legal track from Regulation F, and it explains why the rules can feel different if you’re dealing with, say, a defaulted federal student loan versus a credit card in collections. If you’re facing a Social Security overpayment clawback or student loan wage garnishment tied to Social Security, those follow their own federal processes rather than the private-collector rules covered above.
Job loss is one of the most common reasons private debt ends up in collections in the first place — if that’s your situation, my guide to negotiating your severance package covers what to ask for before you’re relying on savings to cover bills.
Looking Ahead: 2027
New York City’s SHIELD Rule takes effect September 1, 2026, and it’s the strictest municipal debt collection framework in the country. Once it’s been enforced for a few months, expect consumer advocates in other large cities to push for similar hard caps.
State legislatures are also likely to keep filling the gap left by reduced federal enforcement. Several states expanded medical-debt and “coerced debt” (debt run up by an abusive partner without your consent) protections in 2026, and more are likely to follow in 2027.
The bigger open question is the medical-debt preemption fight: whether federal law actually overrides the roughly 15 state laws banning medical debt from credit reports is still unresolved and could get tested in court well into 2027. The CFPB’s own funding and authority also remain tied up in ongoing litigation, so don’t assume the federal rulebook will stay static — check back here or with your state Attorney General’s office before assuming an old rule still applies.
