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AssigneeBellSouth Intellectual Property Corporation
InventorsJames Carlton Bedingfield, Navneet Patel, Emily A. Candell, Ann V. McLaughlin, Robert E. Braudes, Janice C. Chung
Estimating the term…
Methods and systems to send a message from a sending party to a recipient without the message revealing an identity of the sending party. The identity may be the name of the sending party, a calling line number associated with a calling line of the sending party, or an e-mail address of the sending party. The message may be a reply to a previous message or a forwarding message of an earlier message. In response to a message being received, a check is made to determine whether an anonymity feature is enabled for all messages received from the sending party, or whether the anonymity feature is enabled for the message. In response to finding the anonymity feature enabled for all messages or for the message, an anonymity indicator is included with the message. The presence of the anonymity indicator has the effect of withholding the identity of the sending party when the message is made available to or retrieved by the recipient. Despite the withholding of the identity of the sending party, the recipient may reply to the message. An embodiment provides that a message including an anonymity indicator may be rejected instead of routed to the recipient.
In a messaging system including a mail system that serves a plurality of subscribers including a recipient, that receives messages from sending parties to recipients, the messages including respective identities relating to the sending parties, and that makes the messages and the respective identities of the sending parties available for retrieval by the recipients, a method to provide a recipient with a message without revealing an identity of a sending party associated with the message, comprising:
In a messaging system including a mail system that serves a plurality of subscribers including a recipient, that receives messages from sending parties to recipients, the messages including respective identities relating to the sending pates, and that makes the messages and the respective identities of the sending pates available for retrieval by the recipients, a method to provide a recipient with a message without revealing an identity of a sending party associated with the message, comprising:
In a messaging system including a mail system that serves a plurality of sending parties by routing messages to recipients, the messages including respective identities of the sending parties, a method to mark a message to a recipient so the message as made available to the recipient fails to reveal an identity of the sending party, the method comprising:
In a communications system including at least two functionally connected voice mail systems, wherein a first voice mail system serves a plurality of subscribers including a sending party, and wherein a second voice mail system serves another plurality of subscribers including a recipient, the second voice mail system providing the recipient with a calling line identification service, a method to send the recipient a message from the sending party without the message revealing an identity of the sending party when the message is retrieved, the method comprising:
In a functionally interconnected communications system including the public switched telephone network (PSTN), an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN), and the Internet, the communications system also including a network voice mail system serving a plurality of subscribers including a sending party, the network voice mail system being at least functionally connected to an other network voice mail system in the communications system, the other network voice mail system serving an other plurality of subscribers including a recipient, the other voice mail system providing at least the recipient with a calling line identification service, a system to send the recipient a message from the sending party without the message revealing an identity of the sending party when the message is retrieved, the system comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.