E-mail stamping with from-header validation
AssigneeGoodmail Systems, Inc.
InventorDaniel T. Dreymann
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Effective aspects of stamping outbound e-mail are combined with a registration system for e-mail senders. A mail sender participates by registering From: line information with a trusted third-party repository known as a stamp authority. When the sender sends an e-mail message, the From: line is compared against the From: line information for the sender stored in the repository. If the result is a match, the e-mail is allowed to be sent. If there is not a match, then the e-mail is prevented from being stamped.
Claims9
A method for validating a sender of an e-mail message, the method executed by at least one processor of at least one computer and comprising:
- receiving an e-mail from a sender, the e-mail including a tokenized header, the token issued by a stamp authority;
- determining an identity of the sender from a first field of the header;
- determining from contents of a second field of the header the second field inserted by the stamp authority, that the sender is authorized to use the identity indicated by the contents of the first field;
- and
- displaying the received e-mail to a recipient.
A computer program product for validating a sender of an e-mail message, the computer program product stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium and including instructions configured to cause a processor to carry out the steps of:
- receiving an e-mail from a sender, the e-mail including a tokenized header, the token issued by a stamp authority;
- determining an identity of the sender from a first field of the header;
- determining from contents of a second field of the header the second field inserted by the stamp authority, that the sender is authorized to use the identity indicated by the contents of the first field;
- and
- displaying the received e-mail to a recipient.
A system for validating a sender of an e-mail message, the system comprising:
- a mailbox provider, adapted to receive an e-mail from a sender, the e-mail including a tokenized header, the token issued by a stamp authority , the header having a first field indicating the sender's identity and a second field inserted by the stamp authority indicating that the sender is authorized to use the identity indicated by the contents of the first field;
- and
- a user interface adapted to display the received e-mail to a mailbox owner.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.