Patent ID: 8411833

Claim:
A method for establishing voice communications between a computing device and a telephone, comprising: providing a user interface to a computing device, the user interface including a link to a target telephone number associated with a merchant; receiving a selection of the link from the computing device, said selection identifying the target telephone number associated with the merchant; receiving a user telephone number associated with a user of the computing device; evaluating abuse criteria with respect to at least one of the user telephone number and the target telephone number, the abuse criteria including first abuse criteria for counting a number of times that calling back the user telephone number results in unanswered calls; in response to meeting the first abuse criteria, communicating an error message to the computing device and precluding a voice connection between the target telephone number and the user telephone number if more than one blackout period is imposed on the target telephone number or the user telephone number within a time period; and in response to not meeting the first abuse criteria, establishing the voice connection between the target telephone number and the user telephone number by calling back the user telephone number.