Whitelist/Blacklist

ClearIP’s Whitelist/Blacklist features the configuration of rules to determine what calls should be blacklisted, whitelisted and whether fraud analysis should be performed on certain calls.

Types of Whitelists/Blacklists

ClearIP offers flexible whitelists/blacklists that can be configured to take action for specific calls based on the phone number, number range, SPID, location, country, source IP address, or reported user agent. Rules can be further restricted to allow exceptions for specific subscribers, by Service Providers, Groups, and Users.

The Whitelist/Blacklist menu offers many options to configure blacklist rules. Within each page,it is possible to configure specific rules. ClearIP will check through each Whitelist/Blacklist page in the order listed in the dropdown menu from top to bottom to determine priority. For example, rules within the Called Numbers page will take priority over rules within the Called Countries page.

The pages in the Whitelist/Blacklist menu generally fall into 3 categories:

• Custom Whitelist/Blacklist Rules managed by the user
• Whitelist/Blacklist Rules that apply only to forwarded calls
• Shield blacklist managed by TransNexus

Custom Whitelist/Blacklist

ClearIP allows granular control of whitelists/blacklists that can be used to take action for specific calls based on the reported IP address, calling number, called number, calling country, called country, and reported user agent. Each custom whitelist/blacklist page is available under the Whitelist/Blacklist menu.

Forwarded Calls Whitelist/Blacklist

ClearIP follows separate whitelist/blacklist policies for calls that have been forwarded. Calls must have a Diversion header to be considered as Forwarded by ClearIP. The forwarded calls whitelist/blacklist takes precedence over all other whitelist/blacklist pages.

Shield

Shield includes ranges of invalid numbers and numbers determined to be high risk. The Inbound Shield Policies and Outbound Shield Policies pages under the Whitelist/Blacklist dropdown menu allow for granular control over when a Shield lookup should be performed and what action should be performed for an invalid or high-risk number.

Actions

The action field in the Whitelist/Blacklist pages defines what action should be taken for matching calls. Options include:

• Whitelist — Calls will be immediately accepted without being processed by Shield lookup, reputation lookup, or fraud control. It is recommended that the whitelist action only be applied to emergency numbers.
• Bypass Fraud Control — Calls will skip any fraud analysis and continue to be processed by ClearIP. By default, all calls sent to ClearIP will be monitored by ClearIP’s fraud triggers if fraud triggers are enabled. This action disables fraud analysis for specific calls.
• Continue — Calls will continue to the next step in call processing including fraud control if enabled. If the user wants to allow calls, it is recommended to set the action to Continue instead of Whitelist if the calling number is not an emergency number.
• Divert — Calls will be immediately diverted to the diversion device without being processed by Shield lookup, reputation lookup, or fraud control.
• Blacklist — Calls will be immediately blocked without being processed by Shield lookup, reputation lookup, or fraud control. If a call is blacklisted, no fraud control is performed, so the user is not billed for fraud control for that blacklisted call.

SIP Messages

If any call is blocked by ClearIP blacklists, then ClearIP will return a SIP 603 with a Reason field set to one of the following options:

• Blacklisted
• Forwarding Blacklisted
• High Risk Calling Number
• High Risk Called Number
• Invalid Calling Number
• Invalid Called Number

Whitelist/Blacklist Priority

Priority within a Single Whitelist/Blacklist Page

Within each specific Whitelist/Blacklist page listed in the dropdown menu, there may be multiple rules created. ClearIP will select the one best matching rule to apply to the call.

For example, shown below are rules created in the Whitelist/Blacklist Called Countries page.

If a subscriber with calling number 14045266060 makes an outbound call to Latvia, ClearIP will apply the first rule in this table and allow the call. If a different subscriber tries to place an outbound call to Latvia, then ClearIP will apply the second rule in the table and immediately block the call. The Calling Number field for the second rule is blank which acts as a wildcard entry for that field.

The order in which rules are displayed does not have any impact on the priority of which rules are applied.

Priority across Different Whitelist/Blacklist Sections

The Whitelist/Blacklist rules are queried by ClearIP in the order of the dropdown menu listing:

1. Forwarded Called Numbers
2. Forwarded Called SPIDs
3. Forwarded Called Locations
4. Forwarded Called Countries
5. IP Addresses
6. User Agents
7. Calling Numbers
8. Called Numbers
9. Calling SPIDs
10. Called SPIDs
11. Calling Locations
12. Called Locations
13. Calling Countries
14. Called Countries
15. Inbound Shield Policies
16. Outbound Shield Policies

Another detail to take note of is that there are sections in the “Whitelist/Blacklist” dropdown in the user interface:

1. Forwarded Called Section
   1. Forwarded Called Numbers
   2. Forwarded Called SPIDs
   3. Forwarded Called Locations
   4. Forwarded Called Countries
2. IP Addresses Section
   1. IP Addresses
3. User Agents Section
   1. User Agents
4. Calling/Called Section
   1. Calling Numbers
   2. Called Numbers
   3. Calling SPIDs
   4. Called SPIDs
   5. Calling Locations
   6. Called Locations
   7. Calling Countries
   8. Called Countries

The sections in the user interface try to communicate that the sections matter in driving the logic within the Whitelist/Blacklist rules.

ClearIP looks at the 4 sections and finds the best match from each section and uses that match, following the logic below:

1. If any rules are set to whitelist, the call is never blocked or diverted for any reason
2. If any rules are set to blacklist, the call is immediately blocked
3. If any rules are set to divert, the call is immediately diverted
4. If any rules are set to bypass fraud control, the call is not to be run through fraud control

As an example, if a Whitelist/BlackList IP Address rule says continue, ClearIP will continue to any Whitelist/BlackList User Agent rule, not skip the rules in later sections.

Priority among other ClearIP services

When ClearIP receives a call, it will check the custom whitelist and blacklist rules, then check the Shield Policies. If the call has not been blocked due to any blacklist rules or Shield policies, then the call will be analyzed by ClearIP’s fraud triggers configured in the Fraud dropdown menu. Any calls that are whitelisted or blacklisted will not have any fraud analysis performed on them.

The complete ClearIP call processing diagram is available under the General Setup section.