Patent ID: 7606918

Claim:
A method of creating a web service account via a mobile device to avoid automated scripts from registering a large number of accounts, said method comprising: receiving, via a mobile device, a request to create the web service account, said request being received from the mobile device according to a wireless communications protocol, said web service account enabling one or more services provided by the web service; delivering, in response to the received request, a challenge for rendering on the mobile device to a human user, said challenging comprising a short messaging service (SMS) message or a link within a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) push message to the mobile device, said link directing the user to obtain the rendered challenge, said rendered challenge including a confirmation message chosen by the web service to confirm that the received request was from the user via the mobile device; delivering a verification user interface (UI) to be rendered on the mobile device requesting an entry of the confirmation message from the user; receiving a response, including the confirmation message, to the rendered challenge from the user via the mobile device, said received response indicating that the received response was from the human user and not from automated scripts; determining if the received response to the rendered challenge corresponds to the delivered confirmation message; delivering a registration UI to be rendered on the mobile device requesting entries from the user if the received response to the rendered challenge is determined to correspond to the delivered confirmation message, said entries including at least the following: user profile information, a username for the user, a password for the user, and an e-mail address for the user; and in response to receiving the user information from the user, creating the web service account for the user if the user is not on a blacklist of successful responses, thereafter generating blacklist data representing the requested web service account that is being created and updating the blacklist of successful responses with the generated blacklist data, said blacklist data including an encrypted field for use in identifying the mobile device requesting the web service account to avoid multiple web service accounts being created by the mobile device when the registration UI is redisplayed on the mobile device, said encrypted field representing a confirmation identifier combined from a device identifier associated with the mobile device, a provider identifier associated with a wireless service provider of the mobile device, and the correct confirmation message to the rendered challenge.