Smartphone Whitelist Management via Pre-Call SMS Seeding
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing robocall mitigation techniques struggle to accurately distinguish between wanted and unwanted calls, often blocking important calls due to reliance on contact lists and blacklist/whitelist methods that are inefficient and prone to errors, particularly with spoofed numbers and limited memory storage in smartphones.
Innovation Solution
A system that sends an SMS or email prior to a voice call to seed the calling party's number on the whitelist, allowing the smartphone to recognize and allow wanted calls by comparing the number against various stored lists, including contact lists, recent calls, and email messages, thereby improving call management and reducing unwanted call blocking.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If the calling party number is checked against a whitelist generated from the contact list, then processing speed is improved, but important calls from numbers not in the contact list are blocked
Solution Approach 1:
The system sends an SMS or email message to the called party before the actual voice call to notify them of the incoming call. This preliminary action allows the called party to prepare to answer the call even though the number may not be in their contact list, thus preventing important calls from being blocked while maintaining fast whitelist processing for recognized numbers
2Measurement precision
If a robust whitelist verification process is implemented, then call classification accuracy is improved, but processing time increases
Solution Approach 1:
The call filtering process is segmented into two stages: first, a quick check against the whitelist generated from the contact list to rapidly identify and allow recognized numbers; second, a preliminary SMS/email notification is sent for numbers not in the whitelist but potentially important. This segmentation allows most calls to be processed quickly while applying more thorough verification only when necessary
3Reliability
If multiple number sources are used to populate the whitelist, then false positives are reduced, but memory storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses the smartphone's existing contact list, which is a universal data structure already present in the device, to generate the whitelist. This contact list serves multiple functions: it provides the whitelist for fast processing, stores important contact information, and can be updated by the user. By leveraging this existing multi-functional data structure rather than creating separate storage for whitelist numbers, the system improves whitelist accuracy without significantly increasing memory storage requirements
Data Source
AI summary
A call blocking module in a smartphone is configured to generate a whitelist stored in the smartphone, the whitelist comprising a calling party number (“CPN”) using various number sources, such as a contact list, outgoing call list, or incoming call list. As each number source is modified with a new CPN, the whitelist may also be augmented automatically, or based upon a confirmation from a user of the smartphone. A contact center originating voice calls to the smartphone may be configured to generate a text call to the smartphone in order to populate the whitelist with the CPN that will be used when originating a subsequent voice call to the smartphone. Thus, the contact center can originate a text call to the smartphone to potentially increase the likelihood that a subsequent voice call will be passed by the whitelist.