Patent ID: 6985925

Claim:
An e-mail server device which manages user information including at least one user, the user information specifying an e-mail address as a public e-mail address owned by the at least one user and another e-mail address as an individual e-mail address owned by the at least one user, and delivers an e-mail to the at least one user specified in the user information, said device comprising: a receiver which receives e-mails; a transfer unit which transfers, in a case where an address of the received e-mail is not managed by the e-mail server device but it managed by another e-mail server device, the received e-mail to the another e-mail server device; an inquiry unit which inquires of the at least one user, in a case where the address of the received e-mail is the public e-mail address owned by the user specified in the user information managed by the e-mail server device, whether to accept the received e-mail to be delivered from its addresser; a notification unit which notifies the addresser of the received e-mail that there is no user owning the address of the received e-mail, in a case where the at least one user does not accept the received e-mail to be delivered from the addresser as a result of the inquiry; a delivery unit which delivers the received e-mail to the user owning the public e-mail address, in a case where a delivery condition for delivering the e-mail is satisfied; an individual-address selector which selects an individual e-mail address managed by said e-mail address server, in association with the addresser of the e-mail and the user owning the public e-mail address corresponding to the addressee of the received e-mail, in a case where the received e-mail is accepted to be delivered from the addresser as a result of the inquiry; an individual address informer which informs the addresser of the e-mail about the selected individual e-mail address; and an individual address recorder which records information representing the user as a target user owning the public e-mail address of the received e-mail and information representing the addresser as an informed-addresser, in association with the selected-individual e-mail address, and wherein the delivery condition is satisfied, in a case where the address of the received e-mail is the individual e-mail address recorded on said individual address recorder and information representing the addresser of the e-mail is recorded as an informed addresser, thereby the delivery unit delivers the e-mail to the user as the target user.