Patent ID: 7212620

Claim:
A method for minimizing undesirable telemarking calls to subscriber telephone lines, comprising the steps of: establishing a subscription base of a plurality of subscriber telephone lines; obtaining a calling party identification for an incoming call to a selected phone line of a subscriber in the subscription base before the call is allowed to ring through to the selected phone line; comparing the calling party identification with a telemarketing database containing a plurality of telemarketing telephone numbers to determine if there is a match between the calling party identification and any of the plurality of telemarketing telephone numbers, and then: if there is a match, either taking a preselected action other than completing the call to the selected phone line or completing the incoming call if an override condition is set; and if there is no match, completing the incoming call, keeping a record of the calling party identification, allowing the subscriber to designate the incoming call as a telemarketing telephone number, and adding the calling party identification into the telemarketing database if a preselected criterion for addition is met once more than one subscriber identifies the potential telemarketing phone line as a potential telemarketing phone line.