Method to counter junk e-mail by limiting validity of e-mail addresses
AssigneeXerox Corporation
InventorBarry Thurlow
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A restrictive e-mail system restricts the receiving of junk e-mail by limiting the validity of an e-mail address that can be used at a firewall. An arbitrary e-mail address is allocated for the e-mail directed to each recipient which is unknown to the firewall. A validity stamp is attached to each allocated arbitrary address. The validity stamp can be a recipient's identity, a recipient's e-mail address, an expiration date of the allocated random address, or an accept number of the response e-mails directed to the allocated random address. The firewall checks the validity stamp associated with each incoming e-mail and discards e-mails directed to the arbitrary addresses for which the associated validity stamps are not valid.
Claims19
A method of filtering electronic mail (e-mail) comprising:
- preparing, by a user, an original e-mail message to a recipient on a computer;
- assigning an arbitrary source address to the original e-mail message at a firewall;
- attaching a validity stamp to the assigned source address at the firewall;
- and
- based on the validity stamp, sorting response e-mails directed to the arbitrary source address at the firewall to restrict unwanted e-mails from reaching the user.
A spam filtering system comprising:
- computers, on which original e-mail messages directed to recipients, are prepared;
- a firewall which assigns an arbitrary source address to each original e-mail message directed to a recipient being unknown to the firewall;
- a validity stamp which is attached to each assigned arbitrary source address by the firewall;
- and
- a filtering mechanism, which, based on the validity stamp, sorts response e-mails directed to the assigned arbitrary source address, to restrict unwanted e-mails from reaching the user.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.