Patent ID: 8291021

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a network adapter to receive an electronic mail addressed to an electronic mail account; and an electronic mail engine coupled to the network adapter, the electronic mail engine comprising a graphical filter to perform operations comprising: searching for the presence of any graphic image in an encoded graphic image format irrespective of content of the graphic image in a body of the electronic mail; detecting a graphic object in the body of the electronic mail; determining whether the graphic object only contains a link to an external address of a graphic image, whereupon the graphical filter classifies the electronic mail as not spam; otherwise, upon determining that the graphical object is an encoded graphic image in a predetermined format, checking, without user intervention, a predetermined list of senders comprising all members in an organization to which an owner of the electronic mail account belongs, to determine if a sender of the electronic mail is in the predetermined list of approved senders, wherein the predetermined list of approved senders is created automatically and classifying the electronic mail as spam if the sender of the electronic mail is not in the predetermined list.