Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) on Monday reintroduced a bill cracking down on "abusive" robocall practices, reviving the efforts in the last Congress to protect Americans from an increasing deluge of automated calls. 

Americans are now getting so many robo-calls on a regular basis that many are simply choosing not to answer the phone altogether.

That’s one big takeaway from a report released Tuesday by Hiya, a Seattle-based spam-monitoring service that analyzed activity from 450,000 users of its app to determine the scope of unwanted robo-calling — and how phone users react when they receive an automated call.

The phone rings and you run to pick it up, only to hear an automated recording. You are not alone.

There are approximately 5 billion robocalls made every month, according to robocall blocking app, YouMail. That number has been consistent, but the context of those calls changes. The most recent scam? Robocallers were trying to cash in on the recent partial federal government shutdown.

Don’t pick up that phone.

Americans have been plagued with an increasing number of robocalls — and the government can’t do anything about it.

Robo-calls keep ringing and ringing Americans' phones — and the government shutdown could make the never-ending assault even worse.

With federal agencies closed, consumers have been left with few options to defend against the tidal wave of unwanted automated calls coming from telemarketers, scam artists and debt collectors that target Americans' home phones and mobile devices at all hours of the day.

It’s not your imagination. You are getting bombarded with robocalls.

Robocalling, a practice where marketers send automated voice messages to thousands of phones at once, surged 60 percent in the U.S. last year to 48 billion calls, according to preliminary year-end data from YouMail, a robocall management company that tracks the volume of calls.

Jeffrey Lewis Knapp saves the four to six telephone numbers his caller ID logs each day. At night he seeks his revenge, calling back the people he thinks are illegal robocallers. “How can I help you?” the Arizona-based retiree says he asks the people who answer.

The social engineering part of cybercrimes will become more rampant and the final countdown for knowledge based authentication begins in TRUSTID’s, top five fraud and customer authentication predictions for 2019.

The social engineering part of cybercrimes will become more rampant and the final countdown for knowledge based authentication begins in TRUSTID’s, top five fraud and customer authentication predictions for 2019.

Lawmakers are continuing their push to end robocalls.

On Wednesday, Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced the REAL PEACE Act, which would expand the Federal Trade Commission's authority to crack down on telecom companies that facilitate illegal robocalls.

Thousands of holiday dinners will be interrupted this season by buzzing phones bearing recorded messages from telemarketers, promising wealth and threatening financial ruin. But here’s something to be thankful for: By next year, the national plague of robocalls could be in retreat.