ANONYMOUS INTERACTIVE TELEPHONE SYSTEM

摘要

An anonymous interactive telephone system (10) for connecting a caller (16) to a suscriber (14) without divulging the identity or telephone number of either unless voluntarily revealed. The suscriber publishes an advertisement together with a telephone number of a system controller station (18). A suscriber reference number is embedded within the telephone number of the system controller station as a DID number. The suscriber also supplies information to the system controller station related to time periods during which calls may be directly forwarded to the suscriber or intercepted by the system controller. The system controller repeatedly accesses a switching station of the public telephone company (11) to activate and deactivate the call forwarding function of the switching station for controlling call forwarding to the suscriber on the basis of the embodiment published DID number. In a second embodiment, a call screening service for persons having unpublished telephone numbers is provided. In a third embodiment, a caller ID blocking is provided. In another embodiment, a call screening system having another machine style interfacing is provided.