Telecommunications – Radiotelephone system – Security or fraud prevention
Reexamination Certificate
1998-07-02
2001-01-09
Hunter, Daniel S. (Department: 2749)
Telecommunications
Radiotelephone system
Security or fraud prevention
C455S410000, C455S411000, C455S560000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06173173
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention generally relates to mobile telecommunications and more particularly to a method and system for terminating invalid mobile telephones.
Fraudulent use of the network of a mobile service provider, or vendor, is a major concern with losses for 1995 estimated at $650 million. Vendors in the major metropolitan areas are especially susceptible to losses caused by “clones” which are reported to account for 90% of the total revenue losses due to fraud. The best protection against cloning is authentication, but unfortunately, there are close to forty million phones in the market that are not authentication capable. In addition to authentication, a number of fraud prevention methods have been developed to deal with the cloning problem. These other techniques include techniques known as PIN encoding, roamer verification reinstatement, call profiling and radio frequency, or RF, fingerprinting.
Some of those techniques cannot directly interface with the MSC to terminate a “suspected” call. For example, even if an RF fingerprint detection system detects a clone, the call is still established. There is no capability to block a call origination.
The present inventors have determined that in order to effectively use external fraud management applications, a reliable method of tearing down a suspected call is required. This need is believed to be especially critical for applications using the RF fingerprinting technique in which generally the RF fingerprinting equipment is installed at a cell site and passively monitors call attempts. The unique RF pattern, or fingerprint, associated with each analog mobile telephone is stored for future reference. On any new call origination, the RF fingerprint is compared with the one stored, and if there is no match, the RF application detects a fraudulent call.
The present inventors have also determined that there is also a need for reliable method and apparatus for tearing down a so-called “pre-paid call” by a subscriber that is allowed to make a limited amount of calls on a pre-paid basis. Once the pre-paid credit is exhausted during the course of a metered call, there is a need to tear down the currently active call in association with generation of an automatic message accounting, or AMA, record.
It has also been determined by the inventors that there is also a need to enable tear-down of an active call by manual intervention by an operator via a Technician Interface (TI) command.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In accordance with the present invention a method and system is provided that overcomes the inadequacies noted above and reliably provides invalid call termination.
Preferably, an invalid mobile telephone call being serviced by a mobile service center is terminated by performing the steps of determining at a mobile telephonic service vendor computer linked with the mobile service center that an invalid call originating in a local service area of the vendor is in process, generating from the vendor computer a kill-call command in response to determining that the invalid call is in process, responding to the kill-call command at a kill-call server linked with the mobile service center and the vendor computer to transmit a call tear-down request message to the mobile service center, and tearing down the invalid call at the mobile service center in response to the receipt of the call-tear down request message.
Preferably, the step of determining includes the step of monitoring calls with respect to matching associated radio frequency pattern of authorized mobile telephones to determine whether the calls are invalid.
Alternatively, in a non-fraud application, the step of determining includes the step of monitoring remaining credit for calling charges associated with metered calls to determine whether the metered calls are invalid.
In other applications, or in the same applications, the step of determining includes the step of indicating at the vendor computer that a call is an invalid call and the step of generating is performed manually in response to the indication.
The step of responding includes the steps of ascertaining whether the call that is subject of the tear-down request message is active, and transmitting the call tear-down request message only if the call is still active.
In such case the step of determining includes the steps of attempting to verify vendor authorization before transmitting a call tear-down request message to the mobile service center, and preempting the step of ascertaining and ignoring the kill-call command if authorization of the vendor associated with the kill-command is not verified.
Preferably, a report at the kill-call server related to results of the kill-call command is generated.
In the preferred embodiment of the system the kill-call command is transmitted from the vendor computer to the kill-call server through a transmission control protocol/internet protocol interface and the call tear-down request message is interface with the mobile call center through a data link interface.
In accordance with the invention, a system is provided for automatically performing the steps of the method described for terminating an invalid mobile telephone call being serviced by a mobile service center. The system of the invention preferably includes a vendor computer linked with the mobile service center and having a provision for determining that an invalid call originating in a local service area of the vendor is in process, a provision responsive to the invalid call for generating from the vendor computer a kill-call command, a kill-call server linked with the mobile service center and the vendor computer to transmit a call tear-down request message to the mobile service center in response to the kill-call command and a provision at the mobile service center for tearing down the invalid call in response to the receipt of the call-tear down request message.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5826186 (1998-10-01), Mitchell et al.
patent: 5854975 (1998-12-01), Fougnies et al.
Dean Lauran F.
Jones David A.
Marcovici Michael
Hunter Daniel S.
Lucent Technologies - Inc.
Patti Carmen B.
Wildman Harrold Allen & Dixon
Zewdu Meless
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