Patent ID: 8787535

Claim:
An authentication method, comprising: monitoring a plurality of telephone calls associated with customer premises equipment of a household for a predetermined duration; for each of the plurality of telephone calls: determining whether the voice pattern of a call participant matches a previously recorded pattern; responsive to determining that the voice pattern matches a previously recorded pattern, determining whether a number of occurrences of the previously recorded pattern exceeds a sufficiency threshold; and responsive to determining the number of occurrences exceeds the sufficiency threshold, associating the voice pattern with the household; receiving, from an authentication requestor, a request to authenticate a telephone caller, the request including: a first voice pattern of the telephone caller; and household information indicative of the household; retrieving, based on at least some of the household information, second voice patterns associated with the household, each of the second voice patterns associated with a household member; comparing the first voice pattern to at least some of the second voice patterns; and transmitting information indicative of a result of the comparing; disassociating voice patterns associated with the household upon the occurrence of a change of household.