Patent ID: 7673003

Claim:
A method comprising: defining a social network of a user, wherein: email addresses specified in an electronic address book belonging to the user are defined as being zero degrees separated from the user; and email addresses specified in an electronic address book that belongs to an owner of an email address that is zero-degrees separated from the user are defined as being one degree separated from the user; identifying an email address associated with an email message that occurs within the user's social network; in response to identifying the email address associated with the email message, associating a trust level with the email address associated with the email message, the trust level being based, at least in part on a number of degrees of separation between the user and the email address associated with the email message; determining that the email address associated with the email message occurs more than once within the user's social network; and in response to determining that the email address associated with the email message occurs more than once within the user's social network, increasing the trust level associated with the email address associated with the email message to indicate that the email address associated with the email message is more trusted because it occurs more than once within the user's social network.