Have you noticed an increase of robocalls and telemarketers ringing your smartphone at all hours of the day? You’re not alone.

The FCC estimates companies make over 2.4 billion robocalls every month. According to Consumer Reports, American consumers filed 1,837,558 complaints about robocalls in just the first 11 months of 2013. The numbers have increased significantly over the past four years.

These calls aren’t just bothersome, they could be costly. Robocalls come with some real-dollar payoffs for scammers. Companies are looking to charge people for unnecessary services and trick you or an older parent out of a considerable sum of money. The cost of setting up a service to execute the random calls is minimal and all it takes are a few unassuming people forking over money and credit card numbers to make the entire scam pay dividends.

Some of the more popular scams include callers pretending to be reps from the IRS and threatening legal action unless the victim pays bogus back taxes. In January, the FCC mailed over 16,500 refund checks totaling over than $700,000 to people who lost money to the ‘Rachel from Cardholder Services’ robocall scheme.

To protect yourself and older loved ones, here are a few easy steps to take to ensure robocalls stop, or at the very least, slow down.

Register Your Number With Donotcall.gov

Recording a number with the National Do Not Call Registry seems like a no-brainer, but it’s shocking how many people complain about the constant robocalls yet never take a moment to check if their phone number is in the official database.

Go to Donotcall.gov and verify your phone is registered. You can ascertain the status of up to three numbers so be sure to add your spouse and home phone. Next, do a status check on your mother or father’s smartphone or home phone. The Do Not Call registry will send an email either confirming the number is in their database or stating the number must be registered. If the agency has no record of your number, click over to Register the Line section of the website.

Get An App

Another option is downloading apps that will block unwanted calls and warn users if a number calling has appeared on any lists of potential scammers and spammers.

Truecaller has collected over 3-billion phone numbers and relies on users to report and filter out the scams. When the app identifies an incoming call as a robocall, it warns the user with an alert on the call screen. The information pulls from a user-generated database that updates daily.

Nomorobo is another app that works just as well but after the free 30-day trial is over the app requires a payment of either $1.99 for one month or $19.99 for the entire year.

Always Ignore

We realize it’s sometimes tempting to answer an unknown call either to tell the person (or robot) where to go or to wait for the prompt to “opt out” of future phone calls just by hitting random numbers. Unsurprisingly, that’s also a scam.

Pressing a number signals or even just picking up the phone verifies to the auto dialer that it has reached a live number and this often leads to even more calls. If you accidentally answer a robocall, hang up immediately and report the number to the FTC on the Do Not Call website.

Block The Number

The final line of defense against constant calls is phone number blocking. Blocking unwanted numbers on smartphones is as simple as clicking one or two buttons.

If you’re an iPhone user, here’s a handy tutorial on blocking calls. Here’s a step-by-step guide for Android users.

Scammers are still outsmarting even the best devices, apps and caller registries. Unfortunately, this is an issue that won’t soon go away.

Want to share your unique way of outsmarting the barrage of robocalls? Tell us about it in the comments section below.