Patent ID: 7562118

Claim:
A method for providing electronic mail (e-mail) services, said method comprising: receiving from an original sender a request for tracing notifications, for an e-mail message; in response to said request, creating at least one tag for said e-mail message, indicating that said original sender is to receive said tracing notifications; receiving at a computing device of the original sender said tracing notifications from one or more non-original recipients in response to said e-mail message being forwarded by an original recipient to at least one non-original recipient; and providing limits for said tracing notifications, wherein said providing limits further comprises: limiting a number of retransmissions for which said tracing notifications operate, wherein limiting the number of retransmissions for which tracing notifications operate further comprises: setting a maximum number of retransmissions for the email message, incrementing an actual number of retransmissions of the email message each time the email message is forwarded from the original recipient to the one or more non-original recipients, responsive to the actual number of retransmissions being less than or equal to the maximum number of retransmissions, transmitting the email message from the original recipient to the one or more non-original recipients, and responsive to the actual number of retransmissions being more than the maximum number of retransmissions, refusing to transmit the email message from the original recipient to the one or more non-original recipients, and limiting the content of said tracing notifications, wherein limiting the content of the tracing notifications transmitted to the original sender limits the content of the tracing notifications to only a name of the non-original recipient while excluding an e-mail address of the non-original recipient.