Identifying first contact unsolicited communications
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsKrishna Vitaldevara, Jason Walter, Vasantha K. Vemula
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Abstract
Techniques involving identification of electronic messages that are the first contact between the sender identification and addressed recipients. One representative technique includes identifying electronic messages originating from a sender that are first contact electronic messages between the sender and targeted recipients. The sender of the electronic messages may be designated as a source of unsolicited messages if heuristics involving the first contact electronic messages indicate a distribution of unsolicited messages by the sender.
Claims20
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- identifying electronic messages originating from a sender that are first contact electronic messages between the sender and targeted recipients;
- and
- designating the sender of the electronic messages as a source of unsolicited messages if heuristics involving the first contact electronic messages indicate a distribution of unsolicited messages by the sender.
An apparatus comprising:
- a processor;
- a first contact determination module comprising instructions executable by the processor and configured to determine whether an email is a first contact between a sender of the email and a targeted recipient of the email;
- a calculation module comprising instructions executable by the processor and configured to calculate a value representative of a quantity of the first contact emails relative to a reference number of emails recognized as being sent by the sender;
- and
- a compare module comprising instructions executable by the processor and configured to compare the calculated value to a threshold to determine whether the sender will be regarded as a source of unsolicited bulk email.
One or more computer-readable media having instructions stored thereon which are executable by a processor for performing functions comprising:
- maintaining a count of a total number of emails sent by a sender and addressed to targeted recipients;
- maintaining a respective record of identifiers involved in email communication with each of the targeted recipients;
- determining whether the sender has previously communicated with each of the targeted recipients based on a comparison of the respective record of identifiers and an identifier of the sender;
- maintaining a count of a number of emails sent to the targeted recipients that represent a first contact between the sender and the respective targeted recipients;
- deriving a ratio of the count of the number of emails sent to the targeted recipients that represent a first contact and the count of the total number of emails addressed to the targeted recipients;
- comparing the ratio to a threshold value;
- and
- restricting further emails from the sender to the targeted recipients if the ratio exceeds the threshold value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.