Eliminating Robocalls – a Three-Pronged Approach

A three-pronged approach to help consumers of phone services receive the calls they want and eliminate unwanted and unsolicited calls that intrude upon their privacy, including illegal robocalls. The three-prongs are:

1. Calls are issued an accurate caller ID number which includes a header code that is unique to the phone call service initiating company when the call is initiated. The combined caller ID number and the header information is referred to as the caller ID tag.
2. Any intermediate call routing transmits the caller ID tag with the phone call. The call routing service is responsible for checking that the call has come from where the header says it has come from, and placing a sent from field into the tag that tells the next routing stop where the call came from last.
3. Customers are empowered by having several methods to block unverified calls: unwanted call by number, unwanted call by organization name, and unwanted calls by groups of numbers. They also have the ability to turn on and off their blocking settings for specific times during the day and to differentiate among week days and weekend days.