Patent ID: 8577002

Claim:
A method of screening telephone calls, comprising: a. maintaining a screening list of telephone numbers assigned to suspect callers; b. storing one or more rules defining when to modify a screening value assigned to the caller's assigned telephone number on the screening list; c. maintaining, in association with each of the plurality of subscribers, a blacklist of caller's assigned telephone numbers which are blocked and a whitelist of caller's assigned telephone numbers which are not blocked; d. receiving data relating to suspect callers, wherein some of the data is received from a plurality of subscribers, wherein some of the data is received from a service provider, a system administrator or a combination thereof, and wherein some of the data is received from the blacklists and whitelists associated with the plurality of subscribers; e. applying the one or more rules to the data; f. modifying the screening value assigned to the caller's assigned telephone number, based on the application of the one or more rules to the data and g. screening a call from the caller's assigned telephone number to one of the subscribers in accordance with the one or more call screening rules based on the caller's assigned telephone number being in the screening list or on the screening value assigned to the caller's assigned telephone number, or both and a comparison of the screening value assigned to the caller's assigned telephone number and a subscriber tolerance level.