Patent attributes
A service for searching for unsolicited communications is provided. For example, the service may inspect e-mail messages, instant messaging messages, facsimile transmissions, voice communications, and video telephony, and analyze these communications to determine whether an intended communication is unsolicited. In connection with voice and video telephony, a voice sample may be obtained from the caller and voice recognition may be performed on the sample to determine an identity of the person or the voice. The voice sample may also be used to determine the type of voice—i.e., if the voice is live, machine generated, or prerecorded. Where the call is a video telephony call, image recognition may be used to inspect an image of the person. The information obtained from voice recognition, voice type recognition, and image recognition may be used to detect whether the messages if from a known source of unsolicited communications.