Data processing: database and file management or data structures – Database design – Data structure types
Reexamination Certificate
1996-06-10
2002-09-17
Feild, Joseph H. (Department: 2176)
Data processing: database and file management or data structures
Database design
Data structure types
C709S206000, C345S215000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06453327
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of Electronic Mail Management Systems. Specifically, this invention is a new and useful method, apparatus and computer program product for ignoring junk electronic mail (e-mail) messages.
2. Background
Electronic mail provides a quick and convenient way for computer users to communicate. A message originator initiates this communication by composing a message using a text editing program, providing the e-mail address of the intended recipient, and often by providing an indication of the content (subject matter) of the message by including text in a “subject” field. Then, using well-understood technology, the originator's mail system sends the message to the recipient's computer address. The recipient's computer receives the message and stores it in the recipient's inbox. The recipient eventually reads, deletes, responds to, or otherwise processes the message stored within the inbox by using any of a number of e-mail programs well known in the art.
Because these messages travel across networks, they generally are constructed according to the
Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages
specification (RFC822). This specification can be found on the world wide web of the Internet at address “http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/htbin/rfc/rfc822.html”. Messages formatted to the RFC822 standard have a header portion and an optional body portion that contains the text of the message. The header portion includes a number of fields that address and classify the message. The invention does not require the use of the RFC822 standard. So long as there exists a method to identify essential information the invention is applicable. However, the embodiment described herein uses the RFC822 protocol.
The header portion of a message contains fields composed of character strings comprising a field-name followed by a colon, followed by a field-body terminated by a carriage return/line feed. An example header field is:
“To: John Doe<CR><LF>”.
In this example, the <CR> represents the ASCII carriage return character and the <LF>represents the ASCII line feed character. The header field-names are not case sensitive, thus, “to:” is equivalent to “TO: ”, “To:” or “to:”.
The originator, who composes the message, specifies the contents of many header fields. The “To: ” field contains the addresses of the intended primary recipients of the message where the address of each recipient is separated by a comma. The “Cc:” field contains the addresses of the intended secondary recipients of the message (again each address is separated by a comma). The “Subject:” field often provides a summary, or indicates the nature, of the message. Although the originator initializes all these fields as desired, the contents of the recipient fields are generally required to be actual Internet addresses. On the other hand, the Subject: field has no specific meaning and may, in fact, be blank or contain a random arrangement of characters. Generally, the Subject: field generally contains a short title representative of the message's subject matter.
The mail system also adds header fields to the message. One of these fields is the Message-ID: field. The field-body of this field contains a unique machine readable identifier that uniquely identifies each message.
An originator can address a single message to many recipients by separating the addresses of the recipients with a comma. Each of these recipients may respond to the original message by sending a reply message to the same list of recipients (plus the originator). Some of these recipients may then respond to the first reply message. These reply messages are termed follow-up messages to the original message. This process facilitates a vigorous discussion between the originator and the recipients, as well as between the recipients.
As mentioned above, most Electronic Mail programs provide a mechanism so that the recipient can reply to a message. This mechanism generally allows the reply to be sent to the original originator, or to be sent to all of the original recipients in addition to the originator. These e-mail programs use the same “Subject:” field-body text as the original message but generally prepend an indicator to the field-text portion of the subject header to indicate that the reply message relates to the subject matter of the original message. That is, that the reply message is continuing the discussion initiated by the original message. The modification to the subject field is generally made by prepending one of the following strings to the subject field-body text: “Re:”, “RE:”, “re:”, “ReN:”, “reN:”, “REN:”, “Re [N] :”,“re [N]:”, or “RE [N]:” (where “N” is an integer). Thus, the recipients of the reply to the original message can determine that the reply is directed to an ongoing discussion and not initiating a new discussion. Hence, a discussion evolves between the recipients relating to the subject matter of the original message.
This process has expanded into the distribution list concept. A distribution list is generally directed towards a particular subject matter (for example, the copyright list “cni-copyright@cni.org”). Thus, those who are interested in the subject matter “subscribe” to the distribution list. Subscribers have their e-mail address added to the list of recipients for messages sent from the distribution list. Thus, when the distribution list receives a message it redistributes the message, using normal e-mail, to all the subscribers (recipients) of the distribution list. Distribution lists can be managed directly by some human agency, a program (a listserver), or a combination of both. Some distribution lists are moderated in the sense that a human reviews all incoming messages prior to reposting them through the distribution list. Other distribution lists are not moderated. Thus, messages received by the unmoderated group are automatically redistributed to the rest of the subscribers without human review.
With e-mail discussions, particularly with unmoderated discussion lists, a recipient often loses interest in following a discussion about any given subject matter. When that recipient would rather not read the message it becomes electronic junk mail—a waste of time to open, read, and discard. Because it takes the recipient's time to discard these messages, they rapidly accumulate and soon dominate the recipient's inbox. Another source of junk e-mail is from people who send messages to a large number of recipients most of whom have no interest in the message. Yet another source of junk e-mail is from people who spam the net. Spamming occurs when someone sends a message to several distribution lists dedicated to topics that are unrelated or only marginally related to the content of the spamming message. Recipients may even receive multiple copies of the spamming message from different distribution lists. Spam has been described as “an obnoxious, netwide epidemic” and has even engendered a lawsuit by an annoyed recipient (see “http://techweb.cmp.com
et/issues/036issue/036law.htm”). Still another source of junk mail results from recipients of distribution list messages who mistakenly send subscribe and unsubscribe messages directly to the distribution list instead of to the listserver serving the distribution list. This results in the subscribe and unsubscribe messages being redistributed to the recipients of the distribution list instead of being processed by the listserver.
Everyone desires to be rid of junk e-mail, but not everyone agrees on what junk e-mail is. A facility that removes junk e-mail is subject to being abused by those who desire to censor e-mail or desire to maliciously delete e-mail addressed to another. One prior art method used to limit the transmission of junk e-mail is to use a moderated distribution list as described above. However, this approach delays the distribution of e-mail because a human moderator must review each message
Feild Joseph H.
Sun Microsystems Inc.
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