New GrandCentral Spam Filter

GrandCentral Communications announced at the International Consumer Electronics Show a new community-wide PhoneSpam Filter. The first of its kind, this free service combines a GrandCentral database of abusive callers together with a user-generated list of telemarketers to filter out unwelcome or insidious calls with a check of a box. As visitors and users report telemarketers and other unwanted callers to GrandCentral at www.grandcentral.com/stopphonespam, the numbers are confirmed and added to the PhoneSpam Filter.

Whenever one of the numbers on the list calls a GrandCentral user who has enabled the filter, those calls will be caught by GrandCentral and sent directly to the users’ Spam Voicemail folder. As more telemarketers and abusive callers are reported, the community-wide system increases in its effectiveness and provides even greater protection to GrandCentral members.

GrandCentral's addition of community or social networking features is one way new providers are adding value to voice communications by extending features in ways that go way beyond historic PSTN features. Basically, that means services become richer and more valuable as the end users create value and add knowledge. That's a big shift from the past, when a service provider essentially defined all the features.

My GrandCentral number is 303.997.1275, by the way.