Patent ID: 8176125

Claim:
An email processing method for selecting emails of a prescribed type undesirable to users and processing the selected emails, comprising the steps of: receiving each email at a point on a path from a source of the email to a user; classifying and accumulating received e-mails based on two or more classification rules, wherein the two or more classification rules that are used to classify received e-mails include: a relay path, wherein the relay path includes a relay order in which an e-mail is relayed from a source terminal to a destination terminal through one or more relay devices; and names of one or more relay devices regardless of the relay order in which an e-mail is relayed through the one or more relay devices; and judging whether the emails accumulated in each of classified groups are emails of the prescribed type or not according to a prescribed algorithm, wherein the emails accumulated in one classified group of emails being judged were classified based on relay path, wherein the relay path includes relay order in which an e-mail is relayed from a source terminal to a destination terminal through one or more relay devices; and wherein the emails accumulated in another classified group of emails being judged were classified based on names of one or more relay devices regardless of the relay order in which an e-mail is relayed through the one or more relay devices.