Patent ID: 7035901

Claim:
An SMTP server arranged to send an electronic mail having an intended recipient to a server that receives and manages the mail, comprising: an advertisement information memory operable to store advertisement information to be added to the mail; a user information memory operable to store a plurality of mail addresses and a plurality of pieces of personal information about users for the plurality of mail addresses so as to be associated with each other, respectively; an advertisement information detector operable to detect the advertisement information which is to be added to the mail that is associated with at least one of: (a) user information about a user having the recipient mail address, (b) user information about a user having a sender mail address corresponding to a sender of the mail and (c) a portion of a message in the mail, from the advertisement information memory; an advertisement information adding portion operable to add at least the advertisement information, which is detected from the memory by said advertisement information detector, to the mail; a sending portion operable to send the mail, on which the advertisement information is added by the advertisement information adding portion, to the server; an addition refusal information memory, operable to store addition refusal information specifying a mail address of the recipient that refuses the addition of the advertisement according to an intention of the recipient; and an addition controller operable to stop the addition of the advertisement information by the advertisement information adding portion to the mail, in a case where the mail address specified by the addition refusal information is the mail address of the recipient of the mail.