Patent Application
20080177846
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a method for providing e-mail spam rejection and, more particularly, to a method for providing e-mail spam rejection that includes identifying user controlled access lists that allow the user to determine which e-mails will be passed to the user and which e-mails will be rejected, and service provider controlled access lists that allow the service provider to determine which e-mails may be passed to the user.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
E-mail is a popular mechanism for allowing e-mail users to communicate with each other over the Internet. Typically, a user will have an “address book” or “contact list” provided by the e-mail software that allows the user to store contact information of other users, both personal and business, from which the user can easily select an addressee to send an e-mail message. However, e-mail allows various people and entities, some less than honorable, to send messages to users in an attempt to sell various products and services. This type of e-mail message is generally referred to in the industry as “spam.” Further, various nefarious entities use e-mail to spread computer viruses to disrupt the flow of information and data. These nefarious entities can gain access to the e-mail of honorable users in many ways, including through legitimate e-mail transmissions.
Internet e-mail service providers generally use some type of spam filtering that attempts to prevent unwanted e-mails from being delivered to a user. Various types of spam filtering techniques are known in the art, most of which have limited success.
In accordance with the teachings of the present invention, a method for providing e-mail spam rejection is disclosed that includes identifying user controlled access lists that allow the user to determine which e-mail messages will be passed to the user and which e-mail messages will be rejected, and service provider controlled access lists that allow the service provider to determine which e-mails may be passed to the user. In one embodiment, the user controlled access lists include a contact list established by the user that identifies contacts whose e-mail messages will be sent directly to the user, and a reject list established by the user that identifies senders whose e-mail messages will be rejected and not sent to the user. The service provider controlled access lists include an honorable business list whose e-mail messages will be sent to the user, only if the user enables the list, and an honorable user list whose e-mail messages will be sent to the user, only if the user enables the list. Other e-mail senders not on any of the lists will have to go through an authorization process to have their e-mail messages delivered to the user.
Additional features of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
a)-1(c) are a representation of contact lists for three users;
The following discussion of the embodiments of the invention directed to a method for determining whether e-mail messages will be sent to a user or rejected using user controlled access lists and service provider controlled access lists is merely exemplary in nature, and is in no way intended to limit the invention or its application or uses.
An internet service provider is a company or organization who owns and operates hardware and software systems that provide e-mail and other internet services, such as instant messaging, electronic message boards, etc., for users who subscribe to the service. A user subscribes with the service provider to create an account so that the user can log into and use the services.
According to one embodiment of the invention, an algorithm is provided by the Internet service provider that allows the user to establish a user contact list that includes personal distance information that identifies how close an entity or person, as represented by a certain entry in the contact list, is to the user. The personal distance information could be specified by any suitable manner, such as by numerical ordering or by a particular classification, such as family member, friend, business associate, etc. The personal distance information can be specified by the user or can be determined by the system software if the user enables that feature. Thus, selective networks can be established between and among internet users.
For example, the user can build one or more “friend circles” in his/her contact list, where each friend circle is a group of friends. One person can be put into multiple friend circles. The contact information for a particular person can be stored as a reference, where what actually is stored in the contact list is a pointer that points to the data storage area where the actual contact information is stored. In this manner, if a user updates his/her contact information, such as phone numbers or addresses, all of the other users in the friend circle will have their contact list automatically updated if the users enable the feature.
According to one aspect of this embodiment, the algorithm may provide a friend talk service, where the user can post a message on an electronic message board to a certain designation of contacts in his/her contact list, such as the friend circle. For example, a user may want a certain group of contacts to view a certain website, review a certain publication, or get other information over the Internet. The user will post a message on the electronic message board that directs the selected contacts to a particular website, who will get an alert message when they “log in” to their account. Particularly, the user can classify the message according to who he/she wants to see it from his/her contact list. Based on this process, an on-line social network can be provided where the users that are part of the network have a mutual trust in that they specifically know the persons who will view the messages.
The user can further specify whether the message will be visible to friend's friends, that is, whether the message will be available to those people designated as friends in the receiving user's contact list. The user can also specify whether the message will be visible to friend's friend's friends, or even visible to the public.
According to another aspect of this embodiment of the invention, the algorithm may allow a user to make a recommendation of a product, article, piece of news, etc., and the user can specify whether the recommendation is visible to any of the groups identified above.
An example of the above-described personal distance information contact list is shown in
If user_A posts a message on the message board, or makes a recommendation, and specifies the message is for friends only, then only user_B and user_C can see the message and join a discussion, such as a chat room, concerning the message with each other. If user_A posts a message on the message board, or makes a recommendation, and specifies the message is for friend's friends, then all of user_B, user_C, user_E and user_G will be able to receive the message. If user_A posts a message on the message board, or makes a recommendation, and specifies the message is for the public, then all of the users can see the message and join a discussion concerning the message.
According to another embodiment of the invention, an algorithm is provided by the e-mail service provider that provides spam rejection based on user controlled access lists and service provider controlled access lists. The user controlled access lists include a contact list that contains contact information of the user's family, friends, business associates, and other people or entities that are permitted to send e-mail to the user based on account information. E-mail messages from people and entities on the contact list are passed directly to the user by the service provider algorithm. The contact list can include full email addresses, partial email addresses or domain names. For example, the user may want to receive all email messages from xyz.com. Also, the user may want to accept all email messages from a certain domain, such as .edu.
The user controlled access lists also include a reject list that is loaded by the user. The service provider will reject and discard messages from people or organizations on the reject list, and not pass them to the user.
Other people or entities may send e-mail messages to the user who may not be on the user's contact list or reject list. The service provider controlled access lists include an honorable business list, where honorable businesses and organizations can register with the service provider so that their messages to the users that subscribe to the service can be passed to the users. Honorable businesses are those businesses that may have legitimate business with a user. The honorable businesses or organizations may have to pay the service provider for the delivery of their messages to the users. If a business or person on the honorable business list sends spam e-mail messages to the users, the service provider can remove the business or person from the honorable business list so that spam messages from the business will not be passed to the users in the future. The user can choose to enable or disable the honorable business list feature. If a user disables the honorable business list feature, messages from a business or person who is not on the user's contact or reject list, but is on the honorable business list, will need to be authorized by the user before being delivered to the user, as will be discussed in further detail below.
The service provider also assigns an honorable user status to each user that has an account with the service provider who does not send spam e-mail messages. As described herein, those users that have been assigned the honorable user status are said to be on an honorable user list. Each user who subscribes to the service provider can choose to accept messages from honorable users who are not on the user's contact list by enabling the honorable user feature. For example, suppose user_A is an honorable user, and user_A wishes to send an e-mail message to user_B. If user_B chooses to accept e-mail messages from honorable users by enabling the honorable user feature, then the message is passed to user_B even if user_A is not on user_B's contact list. However, if user_B chooses to disable the honorable user feature, the e-mail message from user_A will need to be authorized by the user before being delivered to the user, as will be discussed in further detail below.
According to the invention, the algorithm includes an authorization process for allowing an e-mail message to be sent to a user if the sender is not on the user's contact list, the user's reject list, the honorable business list or the honorable user list. Further, the authorization process can be used to authorize a message to a user from a sender that is on the honorable business list or on the honorable user list if the user has the honorable business and/or honorable user feature disabled. A detailed discussion of one example of a suitable authorization process is discussed below.
If the sender is not on the user's reject list at the decision diamond 16, the algorithm determines whether the sender is an external sender, i.e., does not have an account with the e-mail service provider, at decision diamond 20. If the sender is an external sender at the decision diamond 20, then the algorithm determines whether the sender is on the honorable business list at the decision diamond 22. If the sender is on the honorable business list at the decision diamond 22, and the user for who the message was intended has enabled the feature to allow messages from honorable businesses at decision diamond 24, then the algorithm sends the message to the user at the box 14. If the sender is on the honorable business list, but the user has disabled the honorable business list feature, then the algorithm holds the message and performs an authorization process to determine if the message will be sent to the user or discarded at box 26. If the sender is not on the honorable business list at the decision diamond 22, then the algorithm holds the message and performs the authorization process to determine if the message will be sent to the user or discarded at the box 26.
If the sender is an internal sender at the decision diamond 20, i.e., has an account with the service provider, then the algorithm determines whether the sender is on the honorable user list at decision diamond 28. If the user is on the honorable user list, and the user has enabled the honorable user feature at decision diamond 30, then the algorithm sends the message to the user at the box 14. If the sender is on the honorable user list at the decision diamond 28, but the user has disabled the honorable user feature at the decision diamond 30, then the algorithm holds the message and performs the authorization process to determine if the message will be sent to the user or discarded at the box 26. If the sender is not on the honorable user list at the decision diamond 28, then the algorithm holds the message and performs the authorization process to determine if the message will be sent to the user or discarded at the box 26.
The foregoing discloses and describes merely exemplary embodiments of the present invention. One skilled in the art will readily recognize from such discussion and from the accompanying drawings and claims, that various changes, modifications and variations can be made therein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the following claims.
This application claims the benefit of the priority date of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 60/880,998, titled Email Service, filed Jan. 19, 2007.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 60880998 | Jan 2007 | US |
