JP2002024146A - Device and method for receiving electronic mail - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To suitably receive even electronic mail to refuse receiving as needed. SOLUTION: Concerning the electronic mail receiving device for receiving electronic mail from an arbitrary electronic mail transmitting source, this device is provided with a mail address storage means for storing a mail address related to the electronic mail transmitting source, a receiving means for receiving electronic mail, a comparing means for comparing the mail address related to the electronic mail received by the receiving means with the mail address stored in the mail address storage means, a receiving refusing means for refusing receiving of this electronic mail when the mail address received by the comparing means is not stored in the mail address storage means, and a receiving refusal setting means for setting the operation and no operation of the receiving refusing means.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

[0001] 1. Field of the Invention [0002] The present invention relates to an electronic mail receiving apparatus and method for receiving electronic mail from a terminal via a network such as the Internet.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art It is possible to send and receive e-mail to and from a desired partner by using a terminal such as a personal computer or a portable information terminal connected to the Internet. In order to perform such e-mail, by contracting with an Internet service provider (hereinafter referred to as a provider) that provides services near the terminal, the public line of the terminal and the Internet are connected through this provider. Connected. As a result, information on any site connected to the Internet can be browsed. In addition, the provider gives a mail address to the contracted terminal and provides a mailbox having a predetermined capacity. As a result, it is possible to send and receive e-mail to and from any terminal or site connected to the Internet via the Internet.

According to such an electronic mail system, anyone who recognizes the e-mail address of an e-mail can send an arbitrary e-mail to a terminal having this e-mail address. And other information unnecessary for the terminal receiving the electronic mail may be unilaterally transmitted to the terminal. For this reason, many e-mails are received by the terminal, and it takes a lot of time for the terminal user to read these e-mails. There is also a risk that important emails will be skipped. If your mailbox is full and you don't delete unwanted mail,
You may not be able to receive important emails later.

In order to solve such a problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 11-68828, 11-167533 and
Japanese Patent Application No. 177714 proposes a system that rejects unnecessary e-mails or automatically deletes them from a mailbox. Each of these methods compares a pre-registered mail address with the address of a received e-mail, and rejects reception or deletes the received mail according to the comparison result.

[0005]

In such a conventional system, it is impossible to read an e-mail that the user does not want to receive, because the e-mail is rejected. Generally, these e-mails are unnecessary for the terminal user, but there are times when the contents of some e-mails related to advertisements and advertisements are desired to be viewed. For example, when a new apartment is to be purchased or when planning a trip, there may be a case where the user wants to view an e-mail related to an advertisement relating to a real estate or an apartment, or for a certain period of time or temporarily, an advertisement or a travel advertisement. In addition, there are times when it is desired to recognize what kind of e-mail has been distributed recently. In such a case, the conventional receiving system cannot read these e-mails, so that the timing of obtaining necessary information may be missed.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention has been made to solve the above-described problems, and has an electronic mail receiving apparatus and method capable of appropriately receiving an electronic mail whose reception is rejected as necessary. Is provided.

[0007]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic mail receiving apparatus for receiving an electronic mail from an arbitrary electronic mail transmission source.
E-mail address storage means for storing an e-mail address associated with the e-mail sender, reception means for receiving the e-mail, and e-mail address for the e-mail received by the reception means and stored in the e-mail address storage means A comparison means for comparing with an email address;
Reception rejection means for rejecting reception of the electronic mail when the received mail address is not stored in the mail address storage means by the comparison means, and reception rejection setting means for setting operation and non-operation of the reception rejection means It is characterized by having.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic mail receiving apparatus according to the first aspect, further comprising display means for displaying the electronic mail. The electronic mail is displayed. An electronic mail receiving apparatus according to a third aspect of the present invention is the electronic mail receiving apparatus according to the first aspect, further comprising a display unit for displaying the electronic mail, wherein the display unit is configured to store the mail address when the reception rejecting unit is disabled. , Only the e-mail associated with the e-mail address not matching the e-mail address stored in the e-mail address is displayed.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, in the electronic mail receiving method for receiving an electronic mail from an arbitrary electronic mail transmission source, the electronic mail is received, and the electronic mail is received by a predetermined setting. The e-mail address associated with the e-mail is compared with the e-mail address associated with the e-mail transmission source stored in the e-mail address storage unit. When the received e-mail address is not stored in the e-mail address storage unit, the reception of the e-mail is determined. The present invention is characterized in that either rejection or not rejection of all received e-mails is executed.

According to a fifth aspect of the present invention, in the electronic mail receiving method according to the fourth aspect, when all the received electronic mails are not rejected, all the electronic mails are displayed on the display means for displaying the electronic mails. It is characterized by having done. According to a sixth aspect of the present invention, in the electronic mail receiving method according to the fourth aspect, when not all the received e-mails are rejected, the e-mail address stored in the e-mail address storage means is displayed on the display means for displaying the e-mail. It is characterized in that only e-mails relating to non-matching e-mail addresses are displayed.

[0011]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 shows the configuration of the entire Internet system including an electronic mail system. The terminal 1 has a display 1 a and is connected to a public telephone line 2.
The public telephone line 2 is connected to the Internet 5 via a provider 3. Provider 3 has a mail server 4
Is connected. Also, the Internet 5 has WWW
The server 6 is connected. The public telephone line 2 is connected to the Internet 5 via a plurality of providers 3, and a terminal user contracts with the nearest provider 3 or a desired provider 3 that meets the contract conditions and subscribes to the contract. As a result, the terminal 1 is connected to the Internet 5 via the public telephone line 2 and the provider, and
Desired information can be obtained from the WW server 6.

A mail server 4 is connected to each provider, and a mailbox having a predetermined capacity is provided for each subscriber terminal. FIG. 2 shows a configuration of an e-mail transmission / reception unit provided in the terminal 1. The communication control unit 7 controls transmission / reception communication of e-mail from the mail server 4, and the e-mail transmission unit 8 and the e-mail reception unit 9 transmit / receive e-mail. Transmission / reception control is performed. The mail management unit 10 performs overall management of electronic mail transmission and reception in the terminal device 1. A mail address database 11 is connected to the mail management unit 10, and stores a mail address of a transmission source permitted to receive an e-mail.

The operation of the above configuration will be described. When an electronic mail is transmitted from one terminal 1 to another terminal 1, the electronic mail is created by the one terminal 1. FIG. 3 shows a data structure of an e-mail, and the e-mail 12 is a destination URL (Und) indicating a destination (destination) to be transmitted.
iform Resource Locator) 12a and transmission date and time 12b
E-mail address (e-mail address of one terminal 1) 12c, e-mail title 12d, and text 1
2e. The text 12e describes a text document, image data, and the like.

The mail management unit 10 of the terminal 1 controls the mail transmission unit 8 and the communication control unit 7 to transmit the created electronic mail 12 from the terminal 1 to the public telephone line 2. This e-mail 12 is transferred to the mail server 4 of the provider 3 corresponding to the domain name by referring to the domain name in the destination URL 12a described therein. here,
As described above, a mail box having a predetermined storage capacity is provided to the mail server 4 for the terminal 1 subscribed to the provider 3, so that the e-mail 1 transferred to the mail server 4 is provided.
2 is stored in a mailbox corresponding to the destination URL 12a.

Next, a mail address registered in the mail address database 11 in the terminal 1 will be described. This mail address database 11 contains the terminal 1
The source mail address (URL of the source electronic mail) of the electronic mail that needs to be received is registered. For example, the e-mail address of a person involved in work or work, or the e-mail address of a family member or relative is applicable.

These e-mail addresses are entered directly from the display 1a connected to the terminal 1 and registered in the e-mail address database 11. Or,
The received e-mail is displayed on the display 1a, and it is determined that the sender should be registered in the mail address database 11, and the sender's e-mail address displayed there is specified on the screen, and the e-mail address is displayed. Database 11
To be registered. By such processing, the mail address database 11 registers the source mail address of the electronic mail permitted to be received.

Next, a process of receiving the electronic mail transferred to the terminal 1 will be described with reference to a flowchart shown in FIG. First, the mail management unit 10 of the terminal 1 sets whether to receive only e-mails from the e-mail addresses registered in the e-mail address database 11 or to receive all e-mails unconditionally (S1). Is set (S2). In the former setting, the mail control unit 10 controls the communication control unit 7 and the mail receiving unit 9 to receive the own electronic mail from the mail server 4 of the provider 3 to which the terminal 1 subscribes (S).
3).

Then, the source mail address (12c in FIG. 3) of the received electronic mail is compared with the mail address registered in the mail address database 11 (S4). As a result of the comparison, if the source mail address is registered in the mail address database 11, this e-mail is received and displayed on the display 1a (S
5). If the source mail address is not registered in the mail address database 11, the reception of this e-mail is refused, that is, the terminal 1 refuses to receive the e-mail (S6).

FIG. 4A shows an e-mail reception screen displayed on the display 1a when it is set to receive only the e-mail from the e-mail address registered in the e-mail address database 11 as described above. ing. In the figure, a list of electronic mails permitted to be received is displayed at the top of the screen, and a title, a source address, a transmission date and time, and the like are displayed. In the lower part of the screen, the text described in the e-mail specified from the e-mail list in the upper part is displayed.

In step S2, when it is determined that all electronic mails are set to be received unconditionally,
As in step S3, the communication control unit 7 and the mail receiving unit 9 receive the own e-mail from the mail server 4 of the terminal 1, and refer to this e-mail without referring to the mail address registered in the mail address database 11. The e-mail is received and received (S7). Next, the mail management unit 1
At 0, a setting is made to display all of these e-mails on the display 1a or to display only e-mails of e-mail addresses not registered in the e-mail address database 11 (S8). It is determined (S9). If the former setting, all the received e-mails are displayed on the display 1a (S10).

FIG. 4B shows an e-mail reception screen in which all e-mails are received and displayed without referring to the e-mail address database 11 as described above. In the same figure, in addition to the e-mail shown in FIG.
It shows that e-mails such as "Campaign" have been received. These e-mails are from e-mail addresses not registered in the e-mail address database 11, and usually do not need to be displayed.

However, there are times when the user wants to refer to these e-mails when planning to purchase an apartment or a detached house, when purchasing home appliances, or when planning a trip. Therefore, by setting all emails to be received in step S1, these emails can be read and used as reference information. Then, when it becomes unnecessary to receive these e-mails, it is set in step S1 to receive only the e-mails from the e-mail addresses registered in the e-mail address database 11.

If it is set in step S8 that only the e-mails of the e-mail addresses not registered in the e-mail address database 11 are displayed, the e-mails not registered in the e-mail address database 11 out of all the received e-mails Only the e-mail of the address is displayed on the display 1a (S11).

FIG. 4C shows the display 1a according to the above setting.
Is displayed, and only the electronic mail from the mail address not registered in the mail address database 11 is displayed. With this display, you can read only the title without reading the text,
Since it is possible to determine to a certain extent which e-mail is the desired e-mail, the time for extracting the desired e-mail can be reduced, and important e-mail from the e-mail address registered in the e-mail address database 11 is not skipped. .

[0025]

As described above, according to the present invention, an important electronic mail is not skipped. In addition, even if it is an electronic mail for which reception is refused, it can be appropriately received as needed.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a configuration of an entire Internet system including an electronic mail system according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram illustrating a configuration of a terminal according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is an exemplary view showing a data configuration of an e-mail according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a view showing an e-mail reception display screen according to the embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a flowchart illustrating a reception process of the terminal according to the embodiment of the present invention;

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Terminal 1a ... Display 2 ... Public telephone line 3 ... Provider 4 ... Mail server 5 ... Internet 6 ... WWW server 7 ... Communication control part 8. ..Email transmission unit 9 ... Email reception unit 10 ... Email management unit 11 ... Email address database 12 ... E-mail

Claims (6)

[Claims] 1. An e-mail receiving device for receiving an e-mail from an arbitrary e-mail transmission source, an e-mail address storage means for storing an e-mail address associated with the e-mail transmission source, and a reception means for receiving the e-mail Comparing means for comparing a mail address of the e-mail received by the receiving means with a mail address stored in the mail address storing means; storing the mail address received by the comparing means in a mail address storing means An e-mail receiving apparatus comprising: a reception rejection unit that rejects the reception of the e-mail when the reception is not performed; and a reception rejection setting unit that sets an operation and a non-operation of the reception rejection unit. 2. The electronic device according to claim 1, further comprising a display unit for displaying the electronic mail, wherein the display unit displays all the electronic mails when the reception refusal unit is disabled. Email receiver. 3. The electronic mail system according to claim 1, further comprising display means for displaying the electronic mail, wherein the display means does not match the mail address stored in the mail address storage means when the reception refusal means is disabled. An e-mail receiving device wherein only an e-mail associated with an e-mail address is displayed. 4. An e-mail receiving method for receiving an e-mail from an arbitrary e-mail transmission source, the method comprising the steps of: receiving the e-mail; Compare the stored e-mail address with the e-mail address of the transmission source, and refuse to receive this e-mail when the received e-mail address is not stored in the e-mail address storage means, or reject all received e-mails An e-mail receiving method characterized by performing one of the following. 5. The electronic mail receiving method according to claim 4, wherein, when not rejecting all the received electronic mails, all the electronic mails are displayed on a display means for displaying the electronic mails. 6. An electronic mail according to claim 4, wherein, when all the received e-mails are not rejected, the display means for displaying the e-mail displays only the e-mails corresponding to the e-mail addresses not matching the e-mail addresses stored in the e-mail address storage means. A method for receiving an e-mail, comprising displaying