The present invention relates to computer networks and in particular to computer systems and methods of communication between users of such networks.
There are many everyday situations that benefit from the ability of a person to send a message to another person anonymously. This is especially true when a person avoids communicating with another person because of shyness, risk aversion, fear of rejection, societal pressures or constraints or other reasons. It is even rather common that two persons may be happy to communicate, but neither of them dares to make the first step. A possibility to initiate communication anonymously may help overcome such a barrier.
Various methods have been proposed for establishing communication based on anonymous messaging.
For example, in patent U.S. Pat. No. 5,950,200A a method and apparatus were proposed for automating the process of confidentially determining whether people feel mutual attraction or have mutual interests and for automating the process of notifying the people involved of such a match in feelings or interests, while allowing anonymity if no mutual attraction or interests exist. A computer system receives inputs from various persons indicating the identities of persons for whom they feel attraction or with whom they share mutual interests. The system collects this information and periodically searches for matches, i.e., for mutual attractions or interests that have been entered into the system. No notification occurs unless the system determines that a match in attraction or interests exists. If a first person's feelings or interests are not mirrored by a second person, the system will not notify either person and only the computer system will be aware of the first person's feelings for the second person.
A shortcoming of that patent is that users may indicate only a pre-determined type of feeling (“love”, “like”, “desire”) in relation to others, and the system searches for the matches based on the entries made by the users, while in real life, on one hand, a user (sender) may wish to send to another user (recipient) a free-form anonymous message not limited to any pre-determined options, and receive a reply to the message sent to the recipient.
In patent publication US20140136617A1, a method of a one-way anonymous communication system was proposed. In this method an anonymous initial message of any type is sent from the first user to the second user. The message is delivered to the second user without specifying any details about the sender. The second user may send a response, which will be delivered to the first user, who will remain anonymous to the second user.
A shortcoming of that patent publication is that the response of the recipient of an anonymous message is not person-specific (i.e. the recipient responds to the anonymous sender irrespective of who such sender might be), while the recipient might choose to respond to the particular sender differently, if at all, had he/she known who was the sender.
One of the objects of the present disclosure is to give to the recipient of an anonymous message an opportunity to make a targeted person-specific response, as if it was known to the recipient who was the sender of such message.
The present disclosure provides a method and computer system for connecting people by giving the possibility to one person (sender) to send an anonymous message to another person (recipient), and giving the recipient the possibility to decide how to respond to such anonymous message (ignore, block, reply) depending on who the sender of such anonymous message was.
In a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure the sender sends a message of any type (e.g. an offering or an inquiry) addressed to the recipient to a computer system, which anonymously relays such message to the recipient. The recipient, after receiving such anonymous message, may take no action (i.e. ignore the anonymous message) or take one of the following steps:
The computer system will take the following steps:
Various additional features may further be offered to the sender and/or the recipient to enhance their user experience. In particular:
The method provided by the present disclosure may be used in conjunction with and/or be implemented as an additional functionality of an online social network (e.g., Facebook®, Twitter®, LinkedIn® etc.) or a telecommunications application or a messenger (e.g. Telegram®, Signal®, Viber®, Skype®, WhatsApp®, Slack®, etc.) or a custom software application or part of another software or special-purpose hardware (e.g., circuitry) or a firmware or any combination thereof.
The present disclosure may utilize standard communications technologies and/or protocols or may use encryption using conventional (e.g. secure sockets layer SSL, transport layer security TLS, etc.), non-conventional or end-to-end encryption E2EE technologies.
Embodiments of the present disclosure will be described and explained through the use of the accompanying drawings in which:
Some components and/or operations in the figures may be separated into different blocks or combined into a single block for the purposes of implementation of some of the embodiments of the present disclosure. Moreover, while the disclosure is amenable to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments have been shown by way of example in the drawings and are described in detail below. The intention, however, is not to limit the disclosure to the particular embodiments described. On the contrary, the disclosure is intended to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives falling within the scope of the disclosure as defined by the appended claims.
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Decision operation 215 checks whether or not the sender's anonymous message is allowed to be sent to the recipient.
If the message is allowed to be sent to the recipient, output operation 220 anonymously relays the message to the recipient.
If a message is not allowed to be sent to the recipient (e.g. the sender has been blocked by the recipient or contains a taboo word), output operation 265 informs the sender that his/her message cannot be sent to the recipient and then steps to operation 270 which finishes the job.
Input operation 225 receives instruction(s) and/or reply(-ies) from the recipient. Such instructions may include one or more of the following:
Decision operation 230 checks whether there is a reply addressed to the sender of the original anonymous message.
If there is a reply addressed to the sender, then output operation 235 relays the relevant reply to the sender and then steps to decision operation 255.
If there is no reply addressed to the sender, then decision operation 240 checks for each reply whether the sender meets the criteria set out by the recipient for such reply.
If the sender meets the criteria set out by the recipient for such reply, then output operation 245 relays to the sender the recipient's relevant reply having the highest criteria priority level and then steps to decision operation 255.
If the sender does not meet the criteria set out by the recipient for such reply, then decision operation 250 checks whether there is a reply addressed to the anonymous sender, whoever he/she is.
If there is a reply addressed to the anonymous sender, then the output operation 235 relays the relevant reply to the sender and then steps to decision operation 255.
If there is no reply addressed to the anonymous sender, then decision operation 255 is performed.
Decision operation 255 checks whether the recipient has given an instruction to block further anonymous messages from the same sender.
If the recipient has given an instruction to block further anonymous messages from the same sender, then operation 260 stores the recipient's instruction in the database and steps to operation 270 which finishes the job.
If the recipient has not given an instruction to block further anonymous messages from the same sender, then operation 270 finishes the job.
This application is related to and claims domestic priority benefits under 35 USC § 119(e) from U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 63/330,360 filed on Apr. 13, 2022, the entire contents, of the aforementioned application, are expressly incorporated hereinto by reference.
Number | Date | Country | |
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63330360 | Apr 2022 | US |