Sender Scorecards for the prevention of unsolicited communication

Sender Scorecards are conceived as a method to enable different IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) domains and networks to exchange trustworthy information on sender identities and other relevant information, to allow discrimination between legitimate and unsolicited IMS communication. The approach uses a secure and interoperable scorecard about the sender of IMS calls. Such a scorecard is generated, transported, and evaluated collaboratively between different network domains. Scorecards are used to generate a standardized exchange format for sender and message related information. Depending on the outcome of the scorecard evaluation, the receiving domain can take appropriate actions such as denying or allowing a communication attempt. The present paper proposes a blueprint for an IMS architecture including scorecard elements, based on 3GPP standards. In this context, procedures operating with scorecards for prevention of unsolicited communications are presented.