Patent ID: 8548149

Claim:
A method performed at an answering service, the answering service answering calls on behalf of called parties when callers place incoming calls to the called parties and the called parties are unable or unwilling to answer the incoming calls directly, the method being performed by a computing system of the answering service and comprising: employing a dynamic shield to detect and respond to unwanted (“junk”) calls from nuisance callers, the dynamic shield including: a detection module that detects patterns from calls received at the answering service and, for each of one or more nuisance callers, identifies the nuisance caller from the detected patterns, a database module within which the detection module creates and stores a caller record corresponding to the identified nuisance caller, and a shield module operating with reference to the caller record in the database module to screen out further junk calls from the identified nuisance caller, the shield module operating separately and independently from the detection module and after the detection module has stored the caller record in the database module, the detection module employing information in the caller record to expire such caller record in the database module when such caller record becomes stale, the detection module: reviewing call records to the called parties without regard to particular ones of the called parties according to at least one of an algorithm and a heuristic to detect a pattern of junk calls from a nuisance caller; determining based on the review that a particular caller is a nuisance caller; and creating and storing within the database module a caller record corresponding to the determined nuisance caller, the detection module employing an algorithm that operates over a rolling window having a predetermined period of time, that considers only those call records within the rolling window that have a non-positive resolution, and that identifies a particular caller as being a nuisance caller if the particular caller appears within a set number of the considered call records.