Devices and methods are disclosed herein which allow a telephone call screening device to be connected in parallel to the remaining extensions within a home.

A system and method for rate-limiting phone number lookups. An account look-up application receives an address book of a first user, the address book including a phone number that belongs to a second user, creates a phone edge by associating the phone number in the address book with an account of the second user, receives a request including the phone number from the first user for obtaining the account associated with the phone number, determines an edge cost associated with the phone edge for the first user, determines whether to provide the phone edge to the first user based on the edge cost, and provides the phone edge to the first user responsive to a positive determination.

An indication of an incoming call may be received at a call control unit communicatively coupled to, and/or resident within, a telephone. The indication may include identification information for the incoming call. It may be determined whether additional information regarding a caller associated with the identification information exists, and if so, a first operation may be performed on the incoming call responsively to the additional information, otherwise, a second operation may be performed on the incoming call responsively to an absence of the additional information. The additional information my include a user-configurable list of desired callers (e.g., a whitelist) and/or undesired callers (e.g., a blacklist). The additional information may also include caller identification information and/or a spam score. The first operation may be blocking the incoming call, forwarding the incoming call to a voice mailbox, transmitting the incoming call to the telephone, enabling the telephone to receive the incoming call, and/or answering the incoming call and then terminating the incoming call. In some embodiments, the first and/or second operations performed on the incoming call is/are user configurable.

Methods and apparatuses are provided for providing information. Phone numbers are stored in an address book in a memory of the terminal. Call history information for a phone number together with a first option for editing of information associated with the phone number are displayed on a display of the terminal, if the phone number is in the address book.

Methods and apparatuses are provided for providing information. Phone numbers are stored in an address book in a memory of the terminal. Call history information for a phone number together with a first option for editing of information associated with the phone number are displayed on a display of the terminal, if the phone number is in the address book.

Technologies are disclosed for determining a best time to contact a party over a plurality of contact periods of time to achieve at least one of a desired outcome and a desired result. In various embodiments, the party has multiple contact types that can be utilized to contact the party. Accordingly, an optimal contact type for the party for each contact period is selected that identifies the contact type with a probability having the highest likelihood of achieving at least one of the desired outcome and the desired result by utilizing the contact type to contact the party during the contact period. A best time to contact the party is then identified as one of the contact periods based on the optimal contact types selected for the party for each contact period and associated probabilities.

An incoming communication processing system and method is disclosed for providing communication and data services to residents of a controlled facility. Specifically, the incoming communication processing system allows outside parties to initiate communications to residents of a controlled facility. The incoming communication processing system may work in conjunction with or separately from an outgoing communication processing system. Many restrictions and safeguards may be implemented within the incoming communication system in order to prevent improper use.

A system and method for a selective ring silencer that prevents people from having to listen to the telephone ring on and on with nuisance calls. The ringer silencer can be: (1) discretely constructed from a telephone, (2) part of a telecommunication device, or (3) part of a central telephone network construction. A receiver demodulates an incoming call. Control logic reads at least a portion of the called identification (CID) data and determines an action based on the reading. A switch in communication with the control logic is actuated to a first state that allows the communication data to be output from the ring silencer, and a second state that blocks the communication data from being output from the ring silencer to a user's communication device. The control logic blocks toll-free area codes originated calls from ringing a user's telephone, optionally forwarding the call to a voice mail module.

Inbound call processing systems and methods for processing inbound calls to controlled-environment facility resident media and/or communications devices employ an inbound resident call server configured to host inbound calling accounts established by non-residents, receive inbound calls from the non-residents, route the inbound calls to an authenticating server, confirm that the resident device is active, and connect the inbound resident call system with the resident device if active or inform the non-resident the resident is not available if not. The inbound resident call server also connects the non-resident inbound call with the resident device if the non-resident is associated with the inbound calling account, the inbound calling account is associated with an address identifier of the resident device and the resident's personal identification number is associated with the address identifier of the resident device, all of which may be authenticated by the authenticating server.

A communication system includes: a relay device including: a storage unit configured to store terminal specification information for specifying the third terminal associated with the second terminal, and a first communication control unit configured to connect the third terminal to the first network if an authentication control unit authenticates the terminal authentication information; one or more first terminals connected to a first network; a second terminal connectable to the first network and including a second communication control unit configured to transmit the relay-device specification information and the terminal authentication information to the third terminal through the second network if receiving the relay-device specification information and the terminal authentication information from the relay device; and a third terminal connectable to a second network and including a third communication control unit configured to transmit the terminal authentication information to the relay device through the second network.