Recalling spam email or viruses from inboxes
AssigneeBarracuda Inc.
InventorZachary Levow
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method for operating an apparatus to recall email which has already passed through a spam filter to user mailboxes. An apparatus stores a highly efficient database for a brief period of time after an email is received, filtered, and transmitted to an email server. Message id, recipient, connecting IP address and other spam attributes are stored in a searchable format. After receiving updated spam attributes, a spam filter apparatus under software control queries the database for messages that were not detected as spam before transmittal to the email clients and servers, and sends spam recall messages. Improved email clients and servers adapted by software instructions, move or modify email user mailboxes upon receipt of the spam recall.
Claims30
A method for operating an apparatus for to recall spam email or a virus after transfer to an email server comprising the processes following:
- building a database of received email profiles;
- searching a database of email profiles to identify spam or viruses, wherein searching comprises
- requesting an update of spam or virus attributes from a reference, and
- retrieving any message id having a match with a spam or virus attribute;
- and
- recalling spam emails or viruses from mailboxes.
An apparatus for searching a database of email profiles to identify spam comprising
- a spam filter coupled to a wide area network, the wide area network coupled to a
- spam reference apparatus,
- the spam filter coupled to
- an email profile database,
- wherein the email profile database comprises
- reading and writing circuits for to read from and write to a computer readable media,
- the computer readable media, and
- a circuit to receive a query from a spam filter comprising a spam attribute, and
- a circuit to reply to a spam filter with a message id if the spam attribute is found encoded on the computer readable media.
An apparatus for building a database of received email profiles comprises
- a spam filter coupled to a wide area network, the spam filter further coupled to
- an email profile database,
- wherein the spam filter comprises
- a network interface,
- a circuit to receive an email,
- a circuit to read at least a message id and source ip address, and write into a searchable email profile database, and
- a circuit to transmit the email to an email server.
An apparatus for recalling spam emails or viruses comprising:
- a circuit for to receive a recall for a message having a certain attribute,
- a circuit for to search a file encoded on computer readable media for a certain attribute, and
- a circuit for to modify any file corresponding to an attribute encoded on computer readable media.
An apparatus for recalling spam emails or viruses comprising:
- a circuit for to receive a recall for a message having a certain message id,
- a circuit for to search a file encoded on computer readable media for a certain message id, and
- a circuit for to modify a certain file corresponding to a message id encoded on computer readable media.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.