Patent ID: 7454464

Claim:
A method for responding to a networking request, comprising: intercepting, by a network response mechanism, a network request from an initiating party on an initiating communication device sent to a recipient communication device of a user; identifying the initiating party, the user, and a communication channel for the network request; using a dynamic social network model to determine whether the initiating party is a contact of the user, the dynamic social network model characterizing a user's social network based on monitoring data automatically collected from network interactions of the user with contacts that the user communicates with over a network; using the dynamic social network model to determine whether the communication channel for the network request matches a communication channel for a previous communication between the initiating party and the user; and determining whether to grant the network request based on the determination of whether the initiating party is a contact of the user and the determination of whether the communication channel for the network request matches a communication channel for a previous communication between the initiating party and the user.