Patent 8488479 was granted and assigned to AT&T Intellectual Property I on July, 2013 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method and apparatus for providing protection against spam calls are disclosed. For example, the method receives a signaling message for setting up a call to a customer, and determines whether the call is from a caller that has been identified as being a spammer. The method processes the call using one or more filter rules for the customer, if the caller has been identified as being a spammer.