Patent ID: 7844669

Claim:
A method for selectively providing an autoreply to an incoming message, comprising: enabling an autoreply function; receiving an incoming message from a sender having a source address; comparing information associated with said incoming message to a list of trusted sources; determining if said incoming message is associated with a trusted source; triggering the autoreply function; if said incoming message is associated with a trusted source, providing a first out of office autoreply to the source address associated with said incoming message in reply to the incoming message; if said incoming message is not associated with a trusted source, comparing information associated with said incoming message to a list of unauthorized sources; determining if said incoming message is associated with an unauthorized source; if said incoming message is associated with an unauthorized source, one of a group consisting of deleting said incoming message and ignoring said incoming message; if said incoming message is not associated with an unauthorized source, applying a first filter to information associated with said incoming message; in response to applying the first filter, determining if the said incoming message is a spam message; if the said incoming message is determined to be a spam message, one of a group consisting of deleting said incoming message and ignoring said incoming message; if said incoming message is not associated with a trusted source, not associated with an unauthorized source, and not determined to be a spam message, at least one of: a) triggering the autoreply function to send a second autoreply message to the source address associated with said incoming message in reply to the incoming message, wherein the second autoreply message is not an out of office autoreply message; or b) suppressing an answer message; and if said incoming message is not associated with a trusted source, not associated with an unauthorized source, and not determined to be a spam message, quarantining the incoming message.