Method for scanning, analyzing and handling various kinds of digital information content

A method of analyzing content of an email, the method comprising:

• identifying natural language textual portions of the email;
• forming a word listing including all natural language words that appear in the textual portion of the email;
• for each word in the word list, querying a preexisting database of selected words to determine whether or not a match exists in the database;
• for each word having a match in the database, reading a corresponding weight from the database so as to form a weighted set of terms;
• and
• in a neural network system, calculating a rating for the email responsive to the weighted set of terms.

A method of controlling access to potentially offensive or harmful emails comprising:

• in conjunction with a program executing on a digital computer, examining an email before the email is displayed to the user;
• said examining operation including analyzing the email natural language content relative to a predetermined database of regular expressions, and using a neural network system to form a rating, the database including regular expressions previously associated with potentially offensive or harmful emails;
• and the database further including a relative weighting associated with each regular expression in the database for use in forming the rating;
• comparing the rating of the email to a predetermined threshold rating;
• and
• if the rating indicated that the email is more likely to be offensive or harmful than an email having the threshold rating, blocking the email from being displayed to the user.