Patent ID: 8718318

Claim:
A method for developing a fingerprint associated with an image-based message, the method comprising: receiving an image-based message from a sender; executing instructions stored in memory, wherein execution of the instructions by a processor: converts an image located within the received image-based message into a grey scale image, analyzes the grey scale image to identify whether one or more text lines appear within the grey scale image, wherein one or more text lines are identified as being present in the image, and assigns a score to the grey scale image based on the presence or absence of the one or more text lines identified within the grey scale image, wherein the score is further based on a number of the identified text lines within the image; generating a fingerprint for the image in the image-based message, the fingerprint based in part on the assigned score; and filtering the image-based message based on the assigned score, wherein the filtering options include: delivering the image-based message, changing the image-based message prior to delivery, blocking the image-based message, deleting the image-based message, and redirecting the image-based message.