WO2005001733A1

WO2005001733A1 - E-mail managing system and method thereof

Info

Publication number: WO2005001733A1
Application number: PCT/KR2004/001583
Authority: WO
Inventors: Dong-June Seen
Original assignee: Dong-June Seen
Priority date: 2003-06-30
Filing date: 2004-06-29
Publication date: 2005-01-06
Also published as: KR20050002320A

Abstract

An electronic mail management server includes a mail management server and a receiver. The mail management server receives a spam mail reporting message containing information identifying a spam mail and transmits spam mail differentiation information differentiating the spam mail to the receiver when the spam mail reporting message is received more than a predetermined number of times. When there is an electronic mail, which meets conditions set in advance by a user, from among received electronic mails, the receiver considers the electronic mail as the spam mail and transmits the spam mail reporting message. The receiver confirms the spam mail from among corresponding received electronic mails, based on the spam mail differentiation information provided by the mail management server.

Description

E-MAIL MANAGING SYSTEM AND METHOD THEREOF

Technical Field The present invention relates to an email management system and a method for blocking unsolicited commercial email sent in bulk to large numbers of recipients over the Internet.

Background Art Electronic mail, or email, is a method used to transfer text or picture files over the Internet between Internet users based on the RFC (Request For Comments) standards. As protocols based on the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), the RFC standards suggest technical and organizational notes about the Internet, such as exchange of web documents, transfer of email messages, FTP, operation of Web servers. In general, email services using a computer network, such as the Internet, are either web-based or POP(IMAP)-based. The web-based email service is available only through access to a web site offering email services, such as an ISP (Internet Service Provider). The POP(IMAP)-based email service is a method for retrieving email messages from mail servers on a single user host using POP (Post Office Protocol) or IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol). FIG. 1 is a view schematically showing the structure of a conventional email transfer system. The conventional email transfer system consists of: a sender 110 for preparing and sending an email message using a personal computer connected to a wire or wireless network; a sender's mail server 120 for receiving the email message prepared and demanded by the sender 110 to send; a receiver's mail server 122 for receiving the email message transferred from the sender's mail server 120 through the Internet, storing the received email message in a receiver's mailbox and finally delivering the email message on demand; and a receiver 112 for receiving the email message from the receiver's mail server 122. Of course, the roles of the sender and the receiver can be exchanged. The sender can become a receiver side, while the receiver can become a sender side. The process of sending an email message from the sender 110 to the sender's mail server 120 and transferring the message from the sender's mail server 120 to the receiver's mail server 122 is performed in accordance with the SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Also, the receiver 112 receives and reads the message from the receiver's mail server 122 using IMAP or POP3. Such a mail system consists of three components: a UA (User Agent), an MTA (Message Transfer Agent) and a receiver's mailbox manager. The UA is a mail program, such as Microsoft Outlook, enabling a user to send email or retrieve an email message from the receiver's mailbox. The MTA is a specialized program routing and transferring email to the destination mail server. Sendmail is generally used as an MTA program. The receiver's mailbox manager sends email messages held in the receiver's mailbox to the receiver on demand. The two most common options are POP3 and IMAP server programs. Recently, web mail solutions that integrate a mail server with a web server have been widely spread. The web mail solutions enable a sender to transfer messages to the sender's mail server through a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) on the HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) web protocol, instead of using the conventional SMTP, and a receiver to retrieve messages from the receiver's mail server through the CGI interface on the HTTP, instead of using the conventional IMAP or POP3 protocol. The conventional mail transfer system will be explained in more detail with reference to FIG. 1. When the sender 110 having an email address of "sender@service.com" sends an email message to the email address "receiver@company.co.kr" of the receiver 112, the email message is first transferred to the mail server 120 "mail.service.com" through the SMTP protocol. Sendmail daemon standing by in the mail server 120 "mail.service.com" temporarily stores the message in a mail queue directory (for example, "/var/spool/mqueue") and then sends the message to the mail server 122 "mail.company.co.kr" through the SMTP protocol. Simultaneously with sending the message, the Sendmail daemon deletes the message stored in the queue directory. At the mail server 122 "mail.company.co.kr," Sendmail daemon determines whether the message is delivered to the correct destination from the mail server 120 "mail.service.com," and in the affirmative, stores the message in the receiver's mailbox (for example, "/var/mail" directory) in a file name of the receiver's ID, i.e., "receiver." The receiver 112 having the email address "receiver@company.co.kr" can access the message sent from the sender 110 and held in the mailbox on the receiver's mail server 122, using a UA, such as Microsoft Outlook. The explained above is a mail system that allows a sender to arbitrarily send messages to a receiver and stock them in the mailbox of the receiver's mail server, regardless of the receiver's intention. While the sender spends little to send the messages, it is annoying and time-consuming for the receiver to keep the messages in his or her own mailbox and read or delete the messages. Commercial email distributed randomly in bulk to advertise products or services is a growing problem on the Internet. Such commercial email, so-called "unsolicited commercial email" and more commonly known as "spam," is sent randomly to large numbers of recipients, without the consent of the recipients. Spammers harvest e-mail addresses from many different sources, such as usernames of ISPs or PC on-line services, and send spam messages that are solicitations to purchase illegal copies of software or films or to be registered as recommenders for certain member registration. Recently, spam has become the biggest web problem, with the spread of email address-collecting software sold to spammers and with the viruses often carried in spam messages. Spam is a threat to the management of normal email messages. People waste significant amounts of time and effort dealing with spam email. As an attempt to solve the problems with spam, communication service providers receive spam reports from spam receivers and trace addresses of spam senders. They record the traced addresses of spammers to treat messages sent from those addresses as spam. However, such a solution is not satisfactory because a single spammer can use multiple addresses to send spam messages with the development of a random email address generator. As another solution, anti-spam software programs are used to store words and phrases extracted from originating addresses or contents of spam and scan incoming mail for typical spam words and phrases to automatically block spam email. However, with the rapid increase in the quantity of spam, it is getting more difficult to analyze every spam for the development of anti-spam solutions. Also, the significant burden of spam analysis results in the rise in prices of the anti-spam solutions.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Therefore, the present invention has been made in view of the above- mentioned problems, and it is an object of the present invention to provide an email management system and a method for effectively filtering out spam email received from various addresses. Another object of the present invention is to provide an email management system for easily filtering out spam email. According to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided an email management system comprising: a mail management server for receiving spam reports from spam receivers, extracting information for identifying an email message as spam when spam reports are received for the message over a predetermined number, and providing the information to the receivers periodically at a predetermined interval; and the receivers for sending a spam report to the mail management server when receiving an email message deemed to be spam, and identifying spam among email messages received and held in a mail server based on the spam-identifying information provided from the mail management server. According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for managing email in an email management server, comprising the steps of: receiving spam reports from users and counting the number of spam reports received for each email message; extracting information for identifying an email message as spam when spam reports are received for the message over a predetermined number; and providing the spam-identifying information to the users periodically at a predetermined interval to enable the users to identify spam among email messages received and held in a mail server based on the spam- identifying information.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The foregoing and other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings in which: FIG. 1 is a view schematically showing the structure of a conventional email transfer system; FIG. 2 is a view schematically showing the structure of an email management system according to a first embodiment ofthe present invention; FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing a process of email management in a mail management server ofthe system in FIG. 2; FIG. 4 shows a format of a spam report received for email management according to the first embodiment ofthe present invention; and FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing the implementation of a receiver's UA (User Agent) for the email management according to a second embodiment o the present invention.

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION Hereinafter, preferred embodiments of the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings. Although certain elements are specifically defined in the following description of the present invention, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that such definitions of elements are merely to improve understanding of the present invention and that the present invention can be carried out with various modifications. Also, the terms "sender" and "receiver" used in the following description refer to terminals, such as personal computers, ofthe sender and the receiver. FIG. 2 schematically shows the structure of an email management system according to the first embodiment of the present invention. As shown in FIG. 1, the email management system comprises senders 210, mail servers 220 for the senders, receivers 250 and mail servers 240 for the receivers, which are the same components as included in the conventional email transfer system in FIG. 1. The email management system according to the present invention further comprises a mail management server 230 for providing email management services over the Internet. Function blocks mounted in the above servers, senders and receivers are as follows: MTA (Message Transfer Agent) 226, 236, 246: program responsible for receiving incoming email and delivering email messages to individual users UA (User Agent): program that runs on a user's PC or mobile terminal connected to a wire or wireless network to help the user (the sender 210 or the receiver 212) send or receive mail MB (MailBox) 224, 234, 244: Mailbox that stores original mail received from the senders 210 (Original mail means mail with a body longer than a predetermined length among mail messages sent from the senders 210 to the receivers 212) MM (MailBox Manager) 226, 246: Program that manages mailboxes 224 and 244 MM (Main Manager) 232: Program that manages the mailbox 234 of the mail management server 230 and generally controls the mail management according to the present invention The email management system according to the present invention comprises: senders 210 for preparing and sending email messages using a terminal with a UA; senders' mail servers 220 for receiving the email messages prepared and demanded by the senders 210 to send; receivers' mail servers 240 for receiving the email messages transferred from the senders' mail servers 220, storing the received email messages in an MB 244 and finally delivering the email messages on demand; and receivers 250 for receiving the email messages from the receivers' mail servers 240. The senders' mail servers 220 can comprise an MTA 226 only. Each of the receivers' mail servers 240 includes an MTA 246, an MM 242 and the MB 244. Also, the mail management server 230 enables users to be registered as members on the Internet and provides the registered members with anti-spam services according to the present invention. The mail management server 230 includes: a member information DB 238 for storing information about members; an MTA 236 for receiving incoming email and delivering email messages to the members; an MB 234 for storing email messages received from the members; a spam mail DB (SM DB) 237 for storing information useful to identify spam; and an MM (Main Manager) 232 for controlling the overall operation of the mail management server 230. The mail management server 230 accesses each receiver 250 (i.e., a registered member) directly or indirectly through the receiver's mail server 240 and receives any spam report for an email message from the receiver 250. When receiving a spam report, the mail management server 230 analyzes a corresponding email message to extract any address, links or words that characterize spam and sends the extracted information (spam-identifying information) to each receiver (member) periodically or on occasion. Each receiver 250 should report to the mail management server 230 when receiving a spam message and identify spam among received email messages based on the spam-identifying information provided from the mail management server 230 so as not to download the identified spam. Hereinafter, the mail management according to the present invention will be explained in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings. FIG. 3 is a flow chart showing a process of email management in the mail management server ofthe system in FIG. 2. Referring to FIG. 3, when receiving an email message deemed to be spam, each receiver 250 informs the mail management server 230 by selecting the message and the menu "spam report" implemented on the UA mail receiving program according to the present invention. At this time, the UA sends the selected message as spam to the mail management server 230. That is, a so-called "spam report" is sent to the mail management server 230 at step 302 in FIG. 3. The spam report consists of the four fields "header," "user ID," "mail server ID" and "mail reported" as shown in FIG. 4. At step 304, the mail management server 230 counts the number of spam reports received for each email message. At step 310, the mail management server 230 determines whether spam reports have been received for any message over a predetermined number. If there is a message reported over a predetermined number of times, the mail management server 230 will consider the message as spam and will proceed with step 312. In summary, each receiver informs the mail management server 230 when receiving a spam-like message. The mail management server 230 counts the number of spam reports received for each message and determines a message to be spam if over a predetermined number (for example, three or more) of spam reports have been received for the same message. If the mail management server 230 determines that any reported message is spam at step 310, it will proceed with step 312 to analyze the message and extract information for identifying spam (for example, a web site, links or typical words or phrases). At step 314, the extracted information is stored in the SM DB 237, updating the previously stored spam-identifying information. At step 306, the mail management server 230 provides the spam- identifying information to each registered member user (receiver) on demand of the UA periodically at a predetermined interval. The UA can automatically access the mail management server 230 whenever the user computer is turned on, and downloads updated spam-identifying information. Upon determining whether any email message is spam based the spam-identifying information, each user's UA rejects or deletes the spam message. A new spam message may be sent to a few receivers at first. According to the process as shown in FIG. 3, when the first receivers send spam reports for the new message, the mail management server 230 analyzes the message and provides spam-identifying information extracted from the message to all the other users so that the users can reject the spam message. The process as shown in FIG. 3 enables email management according to the present invention by filtering out spam. It is possible to set different noxious levels of spam and discriminate spam advertisements of general products against those of adult sites so that the users can selectively receive or report spam according to the noxious levels. In other words, each user's UA can be set to report only spam messages above a predetermined level of two or more noxious levels at step 302. The noxious level of each spam message is entered in a proper field of the spam report format as shown in FIG. 4. Also, the noxious level is included in the spam-identifying information to be stored. In addition, each user's UA enables the user to previously set spam levels allowed to be received or not to be received and thus receive spam messages at an allowable level. Hereinafter, the implementation of a receiver's UA will be explained in detail with reference to FIG. 5. FIG. 5 is a flow chart showing the implementation of a receiver's UA for the email management according to the second embodiment of the present invention. Referring to FIG. 5, when a user selects a menu to access received email, the UA proceeds with step 510 to determine whether any new email messages have been received at the receiver's mail server 240. If there are new messages received, the UA will proceed with step 512 to compare each message with spam-identifying information provided from the mail management server 230 and stored previously. At step 514, the UA determines whether any received message includes the spam-identifying information. If any received message is determined to be spam, the UA will proceed with step 516. Otherwise, the UA will proceed with step 522. At step 516, the UA checks the spam level of the received message. At step 518, the UA determines whether the spam level is allowed to be received based on the information about allowable and unallowable levels set by the users. If the spam is determined to be of an unallowable level at step 518, the UA will proceed with step 520. Otherwise, the UA will proceed with step 522. After rejecting or deleting the spam at step 520, the UA proceeds with step 522. At step 522, the UA determines whether the current message is the last of the received messages. If not, the UA will proceed with step 512 and subsequent steps to determine whether the next message is spam. Upon checking to the last of the received messages, the UA terminates the spam- identifying process. After downloading the received messages, the UA informs the receiver's mail server 240 that all the received messages have been downloaded. Accordingly, the receiver's mail server 240 deletes the messages temporarily stored therein. According to the preferred embodiment explained above, the mail management server receives spam reports for a spam-like email message from some user's UAs and analyzes the message to extract spam-identifying information. According to another preferred embodiment, the email management system can be configured to make each user's UA analyze any spam-like email message and provide spam-identifying information extracted from the message to the mail management server. In such a case, the mail management server can be configured to collect all spam-identifying information received from the users. Although spam-identifying information is provided only to each user's UA in the embodiment explained above, it can also be provided to each receiver's mail server, thereby enabling the receiver's mail server to manage the receiver's email based on the spam-identifying information. Also, the mail management server can be configured to gives mileage points to the members who frequently reports spam so that the members can use additional services or produces according to their accumulated mileage points. The email management services according to the present invention can be partially or wholly charged. In such a case, the email management system can be configured to properly manage the members. Industrial Applicability As can be seen from the foregoing, the email management system and method according to the present invention can effectively and easily deal with spam email received from various addresses. While this invention has been described in connection with what is presently considered to be the most practical and preferred embodiment, it is to be understood that the invention is not limited to the disclosed embodiment and the drawings, but, on the contrary, it is intended to cover various modifications and variations within the spirit and scope ofthe appended claims.

Claims

WHAT IS CLAIMED IS:

1. An email management system comprising: a mail management server for receiving spam reports from spam receivers, extracting information for identifying an email message as spam when spam reports are received for the message over a predetermined number, and providing the information to the receivers periodically at a predetermined interval; and receivers for sending a spam report to the mail management server when receiving an email message deemed to be spam, and identifying spam among email messages received and held in a mail server based on the spam-identifying information provided from the mail management server.

2. The email management system according to claim 1, wherein said spam-identifying information includes an originating address and a link of the corresponding email message.

3. A method for managing email in an email management server connected to a plurality of users on the Internet, comprising the steps of: receiving spam reports from users and counting the number of spam reports received for each email message; extracting information for identifying an email message as spam when spam reports are received for the message over a predetermined number; and providing the spam-identifying information to the users periodically at a predetermined interval to enable the users to identify spam among email messages received and held in a mail server based on the spam-identifying information.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein said spam-identifying information includes an originating address and a link of the corresponding email message.

5. The method according to claim 3, wherein said spam reports include noxious levels of spam set by the users for the corresponding email message and said spam-identifying information includes the spam levels.