Patent ID: 8700715
Filing Date: 2014-04-15
Classification: G06F,H04L

Abstract:
1. A method of blocking an electronic mail transmission comprising: monitoring an electronic mail message at a point on a transmission path; determining a subscriber associated with said electronic mail message; determining if said subscriber is a blocked subscriber; if said subscriber is a blocked subscriber, preventing transmission of said electronic mail message from said point, and every time any identified electronic mail message is received from the subscriber, the subscriber's sending rate profile is updated to indicate a subscriber's attempt to send the electronic mail message, wherein the sending rate profile stores a status flag indicating whether the subscriber is currently blocked from transmitting electronic mail messages based on determining whether the subscriber has attempted to transmit a predefined number of email messages over a predefined period of time; determining, via the status flag, whether the subscriber is exceeding at least one threshold applied to the sending rate profile every time said any identified electronic mail message is received from the subscriber; identifying an e-mail packet and determining an upstream transmission of the e-ail message is to be blocked; analyzing the e-mail packet to retrieve an IP address of the e-mail packet and executing a query on a database to retrieve a subscriber identity associated with the IP address and to retrieve the subscriber's sending rate profile; and blocking the subscriber from sending electronic mail messages by injecting a blocking packet into an electronic mail data stream, which destroys an electronic mail connection and stops the electronic mail messages from being sent, the blocking packet mimicking a subscriber packet by including at least one of a peer, port, and sequence numbering.