Patent ID: 7908328
Filing Date: 2011-03-15
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method implemented by one or more processors executing instructions stored in one or more computer-readable storage media, the method comprising: providing, by the one or more processors, a spam filtering mechanism for identifying spammers in an electronic mail (email) system; identifying, by the spam filtering mechanism provided by the one or more processors, certain Internet Protocol (IP) addresses as spammers based at least in part upon feedback data from recipients of email sent from the certain IP addresses; using heuristics, by the one or more processors, to distinguish between the spammers and an email forwarder that performs a forwarding functionality for the recipients, the heuristics determining that a particular IP address of the email forwarder does not belong to a spammer when a particular recipient receives more than a predetermined minimum number of emails from the particular IP address of the email forwarder over a predetermined period of time and more than a predetermined percentage of the emails received from the particular IP address are marked as spam by the particular recipient in feedback data when the emails are received by the particular recipient; following the determination that the particular IP address of the email forwarder does not belong to one of said spammers, treating email received from the particular IP address of the email forwarder differently than email received from the certain IP addresses identified as spammers; and following distinguishing between the spammers and the email forwarder, forming a hint for communication to the spam filtering mechanism, wherein the spam filtering mechanism performs an action that is configured to determine whether subsequent email received from the email forwarder is spam based at least in part on the hint, wherein: