The U.S. government said Tuesday that it plans to take aim at the scourge of unwelcome phone calls and spam text messages plaguing millions of consumers — but one of its proposals drew sharp rebukes, with critics concerned that it could enable telecom giants to censor legitimate communications.

It is estimated that by early next year, nearly 50 percent of all the calls you get on your cellphone will be robocalls. Last month alone, more than five billion robocalls were made.

Sens. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) introduced legislation Friday that would levy a hefty fine on illegal robocalls and attempt to prevent them from reaching consumers in the first place. 

Your cellphone rings. You don’t recognize the number on the screen, but the call appears to be coming from your area code – perhaps even your exchange. Maybe the display shows it’s coming from your town.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission got on his high horse this week and told phone companies they better do something about robocalls. Or else.

(CNN) Thirty billion robocalls were made to American consumers in 2017, according to YouMail, a robocall-blocking service. And while robocalls, made with an automated dialer or using a prerecorded or artificial voice, torment Democrats, Republicans and independents alike, even on this issue, Washington leadership has found a way to divide along party lines.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai on Monday wrote the chief executives of major telephone service providers and other companies, demanding they launch a system no later than 2019 to combat billions of "robocalls" and other nuisance calls received monthly by American consumers.

Even if you don't agree with Ajit Pai's stance on some important issues, you might still want to hear about his latest campaign against robocalls. The FCC chairman has demanded(PDF) the adoption of a robust call authentication system to prevent caller ID spoofing, telling American carriers to implement the technology no later than 2019.

Just weeks after the Social Security Administration (SSA) warned about an Office of the Inspector General (OIG) impersonation scheme, the Acting Inspector General of Social Security, Gale Stallworth Stone, is raising an alert about a new scam.

Cash is not king when it comes to the latest round of scams.

The Federal Trade Commission has issued a warning to consumers that criminals are posing as government officials and asking people to use a gift card to pay a bogus tax bill or get a new Medicare card.

Most of us have been trained to be wary of clicking on links and attachments that arrive in emails unexpected, but it’s easy to forget scam artists are constantly dreaming up innovations that put a new shine on old-fashioned telephone-based phishing scams.

If you have, well, a phone number, you’ve probably received a robocall before. It was likely one of those annoying calls from an unknown number featuring a computer voice badgering you about some stupid service you supposedly need to buy. If you’ve been noticing more and more of these correspondences, you’re not alone.

The problem of unsolicited robocalls has gotten so bad that many people now refuse to pick up calls from numbers they don't know. It's become a defense of last resort in an increasingly frustrating situation that's led to nearly 25 million Americans becoming victims of fraud. If only it were that simple to solve.

If you think you're fed up with getting robocalls, Apple is taking it to another level.

A new software patent from the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant could help kill robocalls and scams, letting users automatically recognize "a spoofing caller."

Within the last two weeks, San Antonio-based SecureLogix has gotten calls from four different universities about a scam targeting Chinese students.

It was only last week that a study projected that almost half of your incoming phone calls next year will be from scammers and spammers. Almost twice as much as this year, and up astronomically from 3.7 percent last year.

The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday imposed an $82 million fine against a telemarketer who made more than 21 million unsolicited calls to consumers to try to sell health insurance and generate leads.