Patent ID: RE43118

Claim:
A method for determining an e-mail address formatting rule corresponding to a domain name, the method comprising: gathering e-mail address data corresponding to the domain name; determining the e-mail address formatting rule from a group of formatting rules for the unique identifier portion of the e-mail address based on the gathered e-mail address data; and electronically storing an association of the e-mail address formatting rule with the domain name , ; wherein the e-mail address data comprises a first e-mail address, and the step of determining the e-mail address formatting rule further comprises: parsing a domain portion of the first e-mail address; parsing an identifier portion of the first e-mail address; and determining whether the identifier portion is consistent with one or more known e-mail address formatting rules from a group of at least two known e-mail address formatting rules , ; wherein the one or more known e-mail address formatting rules are from a list consisting of: last.first, first.last, alphanumeric only, LLLLLLFF, FFLLLLLL, FMLLLLLL, telephone number, punctuation required, minimum number of characters, or maximum number of characters.