Patent ID: 8041769

Claim:
A method of inciting unsolicited email messages, the method comprising: planting a bait email address at a location on a computer network, the location being a likely target for a third party attempting to harvest email addresses, wherein the bait email address is a first bait email address; receiving an email message addressed to the bait email address; tracking the bait email address, along with the location at which the bait email address was planted; correlating the received email message with the tracked bait email address and location; analyzing with a computer system the received email message to determine whether the received email message is an unsolicited email message; and in response to determining the received email message is an unsolicited message, indicating with the computer system that the location is a likely source for unsolicited email messages, prioritizing the location for additional planting operations, and planting at least one additional bait email address at the location on the Internet at which the first bait email address was planted.