The present invention relates to computer managed communication networks, such as the World Wide Web (Web), electronic mail (E-mail) messages transmitted over such networks and, particularly, to the elimination of nuisance electronic mail, e.g. spam that intrudes into the E-mail received at receiving network display terminals.
The past decade has been marked by a technological revolution driven by the convergence of the data processing industry with the consumer electronics industry. The effect has, in turn, driven technologies that have been known and available but relatively quiescent over the years. A major one of these technologies is the Internet or Web related distribution of documents. The Web or Internet, which had quietly existed for over a generation as a loose academic and government data distribution facility, reached “critical mass” and commenced a period of phenomenal expansion. With this expansion, businesses and consumers have direct access to all matter of documents and media through the Web. Also, as a result of the rapid expansion of the Web, E-mail, that has been distributed for over 25 years over smaller private and specific purpose networks, has moved into distribution over the Web because of the vast distribution channels that are available.
In order to encourage this rapid expansion of the Web, there has been an emphasis on easy access both for the receivers of E-mail and other Web documents and for the providers and sources of such mail and documents. However, along with the obvious advantages of such an open system has come a set of problems resulting from an open system. A major one of such problems has been the proliferation of unsolicited spam and like nuisance electronic mail that is distributed en masse over the Web or Internet and, at the very least, clogs up the “In-boxes” of the receiving terminals.
While spam may be a nuisance to 99% of its recipients, the purveyors still consider it a cheap and effective way of reaching their target 1% or less. However, spam is more than an inconvenient nuisance. It has been estimated that there are 15 billion spam messages a day. Also, in 2003, the estimated costs to U.S. businesses for the elimination of spam has been about $10 billion. With such costs involved, it is clear that there are a great many relatively effective systems for spam elimination available to business and other organizations able to bear the costs of spam elimination. On the other hand, smaller individual consumers/users and home receiving terminals are often faced with the choices of living with the spam inconvenience, wasting valuable time with the installation, maintenance and updating of complex systems or paying the higher costs of sophisticated spam elimination systems.
The present invention is directed to the needs of primarily the smaller and less technology-sophisticated receiving terminal user, and provides such user with a simple, inexpensive and interactively intuitive implementation of selectively turning spam off his receiving E-mail terminal.
The invention is applicable to communication networks, such as the Web or Internet, with user access via a plurality of data processor controlled interactive receiving display terminals. It provides for an E-mail distribution system for eliminating nuisance electronic mail, e.g. spam from mail sent to said receiving terminals from sending locations remote from such terminals. The invention uses the combination of means for assigning respective addresses to each of the receiving terminals; means for addressing mail respectively to each of these receiving terminals; means enabling a user respectively at each of the receiving terminals to modify the receiving terminal address to include the designation of a server intermediate the sending location; and means at the intermediate server for identifying and eliminating nuisance electronic mail. The implementation of the invention further includes routing means for routing to the intermediate server, electronic mail addressed to the receiving terminal with the modified address.
The system is made user-friendly and intuitive by the combination of means on the receiving display terminal for prompting a user to interactively select to modify the terminal address, together with means responsive to this user selected means for inserting the domain of the intermediate server into the address of said receiving display terminal.
The intermediate server may conveniently be a hub server for identifying and eliminating spam from a plurality of said receiving display terminals. The significant advantage of this invention is that it provides a very simple and cost effective implementation for enabling all users to access a spam disposal hub server system that may be maintained and continually upgraded with the latest and most sophisticated expedients. Because the costs of this system maintenance are minimized by the sharing of a great many subscribers, each individual user has the benefit of spam elimination technology well beyond what the user could afford on an individual basis.
The present invention will be better understood and its numerous objects and advantages will become more apparent to those skilled in the art by reference to the following drawings, in conjunction with the accompanying specification, in which:
Referring to
As set forth above, the particular spam elimination method does not have any criticality to the invention. In fact, spam elimination is a very fluid technology that has to continually change and become increasingly sophisticated in order to keep up with the spammers who are also continually striving to become more sophisticated in order to keep a step ahead of spam elimination technology. For these reasons, the service to businesses and to consumers offered by the present invention may be valuable. The E-mail user does not have to constantly update to have the latest spam filtering innovations with the attendant costs and time used. The business service provides a simple interactive display process that diverts E-mail through the intermediate hub server via address modification. The hub server provider through the financial support of his fees to his subscribers can bear the costs of the latest spam elimination technology.
Referring to
A read only memory (ROM) 16 is connected to CPU 10 via bus 12 and includes the basic input/output system (BIOS) that controls the basic computer functions. RAM 14, I/O adapter 18 and communications adapter 34 are also interconnected to system bus 12. I/O adapter 18 communicates with the disk storage device 20. Communications adapter 34 interconnects bus 12 with an outside network enabling the data processing system to communicate as respectively described above through the Web or Internet. The latter two terms are meant to be generally interchangeable and are so used in the present description of the distribution network. I/O devices are also connected to system bus 12 via user interface adapter 22 and display adapter 36. Keyboard 24 and mouse 26 are all interconnected to bus 12 through user interface adapter 22. It is through such input devices that the user may interactively receive or control E-mail messages. Display adapter 36 includes a frame buffer 39 that is a storage device that holds a representation of each pixel on the display screen 38. Images may be stored in frame buffer 39 for display on monitor 38 through various components, such as a digital to analog converter (not shown) and the like. By using the aforementioned I/O devices, a user is capable of inputting information to the system through the keyboard 24 or mouse 26 and receiving output information from the system via display 38. When the data processing system of
Now with respect to the sequence of
Now, with respect to
In accordance to a particular aspect of this invention, the users may be provided with interactive display means for selecting E-mail sources known to the receiving user to be exempt from any spam clearing, e.g. the hub server may be by-passed, step 76. This may be done simply at the receiving terminal by not using the modified address when communicating with such known sources. Alternatively, provision may be made for the hub server filtering and then passing such known source E-mail directly to the receiving terminal without span authentication.
Finally, step 77, an on-screen button may be provided that enables the user to deactivate the span elimination routing by clicking off to remove the E-mail address modification and return to the original E-mail address of the receiving station.
Now, with reference to the flowchart of
It should be noted that the programs covered by the present invention may be stored outside of the present computer systems until they are required. The program instructions may be stored in another readable medium, e.g. in disk drives associated with the receiving terminals or the hub servers. The program instructions may be in a removable memory, such as an optical disk for use in a CD ROM computer input or in a floppy disk for use in a floppy disk drive computer input. Further, the program instructions may be stored in the memory of another computer prior to use in the system of the present invention and transmitted over a Local Area Network (LAN) or a Wide Area Network (WAN), such as the Internet, when required by the user of the present invention. One skilled in the art should appreciate that the processes controlling the present invention are capable of being distributed in the form of computer readable media of a variety of forms.
Although certain preferred embodiments have been shown and described, it will be understood that many changes and modifications may be made therein without departing from the scope and intent of the appended claims.