Patent ID: 7941415

Claim:
A method for flagging email messages sent to an email user containing inquiries directed to the email user, the method comprising: defining a natural language model for a set of inquiring phrasal forms in a first data store; defining a list of terms used to identify a first user having an email address managed by an email host system in a second data store; accessing the email host system to retrieve an email message sent to the email address; parsing a textual content of a message body of the email message to generate one or more natural language tokens each corresponding to a text string in the message body; accessing the first data store to identify each of the one or more natural language tokens that matches with an inquiring phrasal form in the set of inquiring phrasal forms; accessing the second data store to determine if any of the text strings in the message body corresponding to the one or more natural language tokens that match with an inquiring phrasal form in the set of inquiring phrasal forms includes a term from the list of terms; and flagging the email message if any of the text strings in the message body corresponding to the one or more natural language tokens that match with an inquiring phrasal form in the set of inquiring phrasal forms includes a term from the list of terms, wherein flagging the email message comprises editing a “To” header field of the email message to include the email address of the first user if the email address for the first user is not specified in the “To” header field.