Patent ID: 8892672

Claim:
A computer-implemented method, comprising: receiving information indicative of a request to send an electronic communication to a recipient; executing by one or more computer systems one or more validation operations to determine whether the recipient is an intended recipient of the electronic communication by producing a validation score, wherein the validation score is a recipient distance value and at least one of the one or more validation operations comprises: accessing hierarchical information, with an item of hierarchical information representing an entity, with the hierarchical information representing relationships among entities, and with the recipient and a sender of the electronic communication being represented in the hierarchical information; identifying, by one or more computer systems in the accessed hierarchical information, a sender item of hierarchical information that represents the sender and a recipient item of hierarchical information that represents the recipient; calculating by the one or more computer systems the recipient distance value between the sender item of hierarchical information that represents the sender and the recipient item of hierarchical information that represents the recipient; determining, by the one or more computer systems based on the recipient distance value, whether the recipient item of hierarchical information is an outlier with an increased amount of distance to the sender item of hierarchical information, relative to other distances of other items of hierarchical information to the sender item of hierarchical information; determining, based on comparison of the validation score to a threshold value, that the recipient is an unintended recipient of the electronic communication; and when detecting the recipient as an unintended recipient, notifying the sender that the recipient is the unintended recipient of the electronic communication.