US Patent 12003666 Blocking unwanted communications over telephony and messaging services

A communication is received from a telephone number of a sender. The communication is directed to a recipient. A trust level associated with the telephone number is determined to be other than a high trust level. Based on the trust level being other than the high trust level, a number of challenges to transmit to the sender is determined based on the trust level. Determining whether to route the communication to the recipient is based on whether respective successful responses to the challenges are received from the sender.