Patent ID: 8141133

Claim:
A method for filtering communications between users of a shared network, the method comprising: receiving by a shared network application running on a network server a communication from a sender for delivery to a recipient within the shared network; retrieving by a communications filtering module from a database of the network server a receipt policy for the recipient; wherein the receipt policy is a set of criteria defined by the recipient to set forth conditions for accepting the communication from the sender; retrieving by the communications filtering module from the database sender's profile for the sender; wherein the sender's profile includes sender's personal information and a link to a homepage of the sender, the sender profile is set by the sender and is maintained by the shared network; identifying from the sender's profile the homepage for the sender using the link in the sender's profile, wherein the homepage is provided to the sender and is managed by the network server; determining by the communications filtering module whether the sender's profile complies with the receipt policy for the recipient and determining whether content of the sender's homepage complies with the receipt policy for the recipient; delivering the communication by the shared network application to the recipient in response to the sender's profile and the content of the sender's homepage comply with the receipt policy for the recipient; blocking the communication by the shared network application in response to the sender's profile and the content of the sender's homepage do not comply with the receipt policy for the recipient, and maintaining by the shared network application a count of the number of blocked communications sent by the sender; determining whether the count exceeds a threshold; and suspending the sender's account in response to the count exceeds the threshold.