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.

Voice fraud rates climbed at more than 350% since 2013 across several industries, including banking. Various causes share the blame including new voice tech, and the rise in significant data breaches.

According to new data from First Orion, a call protection company, the amount of junk calls will reach 46% by mid-year 2019. And by the end of that year, the amount is projected to finally cross the halfway point, meaning that half of all calls will be spam.

The phone call in early June purporting to be from Chinese authorities was, in a word, alarming. The Massachusetts woman who answered it learned she may have been the victim of identity theft.

Racist robocalls targeting Andrew Gillum, the first black nominee for Florida governor from a major party, have been placed to residents from an out-of-state white supremacist entity.