Telephonic communications – Audio message storage – retrieval – or synthesis
Reexamination Certificate
1997-08-11
2001-06-12
Tsang, Fan (Department: 2645)
Telephonic communications
Audio message storage, retrieval, or synthesis
C379S088010, C379S091010, C379S144020, C379S145000, C379S189000, C704S270000, C704S273000, C382S115000, C382S116000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06246751
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to apparatus and methods for user identification to deny access or service to unauthorized users and, more particularly, to apparatus and methods for speaker identification to deny access of a user to a voice dialing system for unauthorized purposes such as abusing a call forwarding service.
It is known that some voice dialing systems have a call forwarding or “follow-me” feature. Such a feature permits a person (user) having a telephone number (extension) within the voice dialing system, e.g., an employee, to forward his telephone calls, made to that number by a caller, to a remote location where he is present. In this way, a caller may reach that person seamlessly whether that person is at the original location of the number or at the remote location to which the number has been forwarded.
However, it is also known that such a call forwarding feature may be abused by an unscrupulous system user. For instance, such a person may desire to talk with another party whose telephone is external to the voice dialing system, e.g., a phone connected to a public switching telephone network (PSTN). By the user forwarding his number to the desired partys' phone using the follow-me feature of the voice dialing system, the user may then dial his own telephone number from any location which will result in his reaching the desired party at the phone where the users' number was forwarded. In this way, the user fraudulently causes the system to treat the call as if it were an system-internal call rather than an outside call to an outside party and thus cause the system to incur the total cost of the call. Also, the actual destination of the phone call (i.e., the remote location) may be masked from the system since the telephone number dialed to reach that destination is the internal number of the system user.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide apparatus and methods for biometric identification and/or non-biometric identification in order to deny access to a class of users where the class may be singular to a particular service or feature of a system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide apparatus and methods for performing biometric identification and/or non-biometric identification in order to prevent a person from fraudulently using a company voice dialing system to make personal calls at the company's expense.
In one broad aspect of the present invention, apparatus for identifying service users in order to prevent unauthorized use of a plurality of services by service users comprises: means for pre-storing one of a biometric attribute and a non-biometric attribute of at least a representative portion of the service users, the pre-storing means partitioning the pre-stored attributes into groups according to a predetermined service participation schedule with respect to the plurality of services; means for obtaining one of the biometric attribute and the non-biometric attribute from a potential user during the potential users' attempt to access the service; and means for comparing one of the obtained biometric attribute and the obtained non-biometric attribute with one of the pre-stored biometric attributes and the pre-stored non-biometric attributes within the groups; whereby if one of the obtained biometric attribute and the obtained non-biometric attribute substantially matches one of a pre-stored biometric attribute and a pre-stored non-biometric attribute within one of the groups, then the apparatus denies the potential user access to the particular service associated with the group containing the match. As will be explained in greater detail, the biometric attribute may be voice, fingerprint, etc. and the non-biometric attribute may be a PIN (personal identification number), password, etc. The invention provides that one or more biometric attributes or one or more non-biometric attributes may be employed to provide the benefits of the invention, however, any combination of biometric and non-biometric attributes may also be employed.
In another aspect of the present invention, apparatus for preventing unauthorized use of a voice dialing system and, particularly, a call forwarding feature associated with the system whereby system users may forward a telephone number respectively associated therewith to a remote location in order to receive phone calls at the remote location, comprises: a database for pre-storing telephone numbers of system users and for pre-storing acoustic models respectively representative of speech associated with each system user, the acoustic models respectively corresponding to the telephone numbers; and a speaker identification module operatively coupled to the database for obtaining and decoding a speech sample from a potential system user during the potential users' attempt to make a telephone call, the speaker identification module comparing the decoded speech sample obtained with the pre-stored acoustic model associated with the telephone number dialed by the potential user; whereby if the decoded speech sample substantially matches the pre-stored acoustic model, then the phone call attempted by the potential user is terminated.
Advantageously, in this manner, the present invention provides for identifying a requester of the services as a user on a list of unauthorized users (i.e., a black list). Thus, the users on the black list are denied access to the service, or provided with a phone number to call instead of being connected, or transferred to an operator, while any other user, not on the list, is permitted access. Accordingly, instead of having to identify and/or verify the actual identity of the requester, the present invention uniquely need only provide for identifying the requester as a person on the unauthorized users list.
These and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of illustrative embodiments thereof, which is to be read in connection with the accompanying drawings.
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Bergl Vladimir
Davies Kenneth
Ittycheriah Abraham Poovakunnel
Maes Stephane Herman
F. Chau & Associates LLP
Hoosain Allan
International Business Machines - Corporation
Tsang Fan
LandOfFree
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