Patent Application
20090094668
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to electronic mail, and more particularly to electronic mail address book entries.
2. Description of Background
Electronic mail (email) has become a convenient and widespread means for communication, particularly for communication with large groups of people. Many email communication software applications, also known as “email clients”, incorporate electronic address books that include an email address of individuals within the address book, and may allow for creation of groups of individuals.
A composer or sender of an email message has means to hide an email address, and thus the identity of a private recipient (or recipients) of the message from other recipients of the same message by designating the private recipient (or recipients) as receiving what is known as a blind carbon copy (bcc). However, the use of address book groups of individuals, as well as oversight of the composer of the email message, can result in an inadvertent inclusion of private recipients within normal messaging address fields, thereby providing to other recipients the email address and/or identity of the private recipients.
For example, a company may include diverse clients to which it sells many products and maintains business relationships via email. While it is important that business matters of these clients are kept separate, the identity of clients may also need to be kept private. For instance, email delivery of a newsletter from a business to clients or patrons can lead to disclosure of the identities of the clients or patrons via their email addresses if the message is not composed and delivered via use of a bcc address field. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an electronic mail arrangement that overcomes these drawbacks.
An embodiment of the invention provides a method of protecting identity privacy of a recipient of an electronic mail message from a sender to the recipient. The method includes identifying a privacy policy within an address book entry corresponding to the recipient within an address book associated with the sender. The method further includes sending the electronic mail message from the sender to the recipient via a network in accordance with the identified privacy policy.
System and computer program products corresponding to the above-summarized methods are also described and claimed herein.
Additional features and advantages are realized through the techniques of the present invention. Other embodiments and aspects of the invention are described in detail herein and are considered a part of the claimed invention. For a better understanding of the invention with advantages and features, refer to the description and to the drawings.
As a result of the summarized invention, technically we have achieved a solution that recognizes and responds to address book attributes related the requested privacy of the private recipient, and ensures that a composer of the email message does not inadvertently send the message in a manner that compromises the requested privacy.
The subject matter that is regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the claims at the conclusion of the specification. The foregoing and other objects, features, and advantages of the invention are apparent from the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which:
The detailed description explains the preferred embodiments of the invention, together with advantages and features, by way of example with reference to the drawings.
An embodiment of the invention provides an email address book having entries that include privacy attributes. The attributes can be applied on an individual entry or collectively to all entries within a particular address book. Further embodiments include an email software application that is responsive to the privacy attributes of an entry within the address book to prevent inadvertent disclosure of an identity of the entry to recipients of a message sent by a composer of the message to multiple recipients.
Embodiments of the network 120 are contemplated to include external connections, such as via the Internet for example, as well as other networking environments that may be connected via either wired or wireless connections, such as an intranet and an extranet, for example.
As disclosed herein, the system 100 includes machine readable instructions stored on machine-readable media (for example, mass storage 104) for storing address book entries for use with an email-messaging program. As referred to herein, the instructions are referred to as “email software” 121. The software 121 may be produced using software development tools as are known in the art. Embodiments of the system 100 are contemplated to include email clients and servers for example.
Address books included with email software 121 are not currently tied to any particular standard, and therefore, addition of new attributes are not proscribed by present design standards. As such, the address book entry attributes described herein are contemplated to be applicable to any email software 121, including current email software applications 121.
Within internetworking and computer network engineering, Request for Comments (RFC) documents are a series of memoranda encompassing new research, innovations, and methodologies applicable to Internet technologies. Through the Internet Society, engineers and computer scientists may publish discourse in the form of an RFC memorandum, either for peer review or simply to convey new concepts and information. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) adopts some of the proposals published in RFCs as Internet standards. As relate to electronic mail, the main standards are “Post Office Protocol” (RFC 1939) and “Simple Mail Transport Protocol” (RFC 2821), which describe how to receive and send email over the Internet. In addition, “Internet Text Messages” (RFC 2822) describes the payload in the email. The contents of “Post Office Protocol” (RFC 1939), “Simple Mail Transport Protocol” (RFC 2821), and “Internet Text Messages” (RFC 2822) are herein incorporated by reference in their entirety.
In an embodiment, selection of the checkbox 220 develops a user defined header in accordance with “header extensions” as described within RFC 2822.
Utilization of the user defined privacy tag 223 in accordance with RFC 2822 allows software 121 to be heterogeneous with respect to various systems 100. For example, software 121 responds to the request for identity privacy via various systems 100 that recognize and conform to use of header 222 extensions in accordance with RFC 2822. Further, as defined by RFC 2822, systems that are RFC 2822 compliant shall ignore user defined headers 223 to which they are not responsive. Accordingly, incorporation of the user defined privacy tag 223 has no adverse effect on any other RFC 2822 compliant system 100, such as an email client or server for example, which does not implement the electronic mail arrangement described herein.
With reference to
Referring now to
For example, the software 121 is responsive to selection of an always send bcc selection box 280, to automatically insert the email address of the address book entry 272 (such as the sender 205 of the first message 210) into the bcc address field 255 of the compose window 235 of any subsequent email message, such as the second email message 240 that includes the sender 205 as a recipient 250. The software 121 is also responsive to selection of a reminder selection box 285 to provide a reminder to the sender 245 of a subsequent email message to the recipient 250 that is within the address book via address book entry 272, such as a confirmation dialog in response to the sender 245 pressing a send button 290, but before sending the message 240. Furthermore, the software 121 is responsive to selection of an ALL Messages selection box 295 to provide the reminder prior to the sending of all email messages. Alternatively, in response to the selection of an External Domains selection box 300, the software 121 provides the reminder only prior to sending of email messages that are external to an email domain to which at least one of the sender 245 and the recipient 250 belongs. Further, the software 121 is responsive to selection of a To Non-Group Members selection box 305 to provide the reminder to the sender 245 prior to the sending of the second email message 240 to any recipient who is not a member of a group in which the recipient 250 (via the address book entry 272) is designated. A group dialog 310 provides for designation of the recipient 250 into one or more groups to which its identity may be revealed, and an internal only checkbox 312 requires that only internal email addresses are part of any of the designated groups into which the recipient 250 (via the address book entry 272) is designated. In response to a Do not allow overrides selection box 315, the software 121 is responsive to prevent any action by the sender 245 contrary to the selected privacy policies 277, such as to copy the email address of the address book entry 272 into a to: address field 320, for example.
As described above, address books are not currently tied to a particular standard. As such, it is contemplated that in order to be responsive to the privacy selection 220 to automatically select one or more privacy policies 277 associated with the address book entry 272, the viewing window 225 and compose window 235 that operate as part of software 121 have been specifically configured for operation with the compose window 200 that includes the privacy selection 220.
With reference now to
It will be appreciated that the software 121 with which the viewing window 225, compose window 235, and address book dialog 270 are associated shall be responsive to the inference that the sender 205 requests identity privacy to incorporate any of the privacy policies 277 described herein into the address book entry 272 that corresponds to the sender 205 of the first message 210.
In view of the foregoing, and with reference to the compose window 235 of
In an embodiment, the process further includes determining the request for identity privacy based upon a previous electronic mail message, such as the first electronic mail message 210 that has been received by the sender 245 of the second email message 240 from the recipient 250 of the second email message 240. A further embodiment of the process includes determining the request for identity privacy based upon the previous electronic mail message 210 by inferring the request for identity privacy based upon at least one of a difference between the From: address field 335 and the Reply-to: address field 330 of the previous electronic mail message 210, and a keyword within the previous electronic mail message 210, such as within at least one of the Reply-to: address field 330 and the subject field 337.
The privacy policy 277 is identified via selection of at least one of the always send bcc: selection box 280 for sending the electronic mail message 240 with the email address of the recipient 250 within the bcc: address field 255, and selection of the reminder selection box 285 for reminding the sender 245 of the determined for identity privacy. The selection of the reminder selection box 285 may further include selection of at least one of the all messages selection box 295 for reminding the sender 245 before sending the second electronic mail message 240, and the external domains selection box 300 for reminding the sender 245 before sending the second electronic mail message 240 to one or more email addresses associated with a domain that is different from at least one of the domain associated with the email address of the recipient 250 and the domain associated with the email address of the sender 245. The method may further include defining, via the group dialog 310, a group of one or more email addresses associated with the email address of the recipient 250. Following defining the group having one or more email addresses, the software 121 may remind the sender 245 before sending the second electronic mail message 240 to one or more email addresses within the group defined via group dialog 310 that is different from at least one of the domain associated with the email address of the recipient 250 and the domain associated with the email address of the sender 245.
While exemplary embodiments of the invention have been described having processing systems 100 including email clients and servers, it will be appreciated that the scope of the disclosure herein is not so limited, and is contemplated to include other processing systems capable to compose, send, and receive electronic mail messages, such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), cellular telephones, and Internet or World Wide Web based email systems, for example.
The capabilities of the present invention can be implemented in software, firmware, hardware or some combination thereof.
As one example, one or more aspects of the present invention can be included in an article of manufacture (e.g., one or more computer program products) having, for instance, computer usable media. The media has embodied therein, for instance, computer readable program code means for providing and facilitating the capabilities of the present invention. The article of manufacture can be included as a part of a computer system or sold separately.
Additionally, at least one program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying at least one program of instructions executable by the machine to perform the capabilities of the present invention can be provided.
The flow diagrams depicted herein are just examples. There may be many variations to these diagrams or the steps (or operations) described therein without departing from the spirit of the invention. For instance, the steps may be performed in a differing order, or steps may be added, deleted or modified. All of these variations are considered a part of the claimed invention.
While the preferred embodiment to the invention has been described, it will be understood that those skilled in the art, both now and in the future, may make various improvements and enhancements which fall within the scope of the claims which follow. These claims should be construed to maintain the proper protection for the invention first described.
