Patent ID: 7653812

Claim:
A method performed by an access point at a receiving domain for evaluating confidence in a sending domain to assign accurate trust levels to senders in the sending domain, the sending domain being different from the receiving domain, the method comprising: receiving from an access point of the sending domain communications sent from senders in the sending domain along with a trust level assigned by the sending domain to the senders in the sending domain, the trust level indicating whether the sender of a communication is trusted not to send unwanted communications; determining whether the received communications are unwanted communications; notifying the access point of the sending domain of communications that are determined to be unwanted so that the sending domain can adjust the trust level assigned by the sending domain to the senders of those communications that are determined to be unwanted; assigning a confidence level to the sending domain based on how well the trust levels assigned by the sending domain to the senders in the sending domain of the communications correlate to the determination as to whether the received communications are unwanted; when the assigned confidence level indicates that the trust levels assigned by the sending domain accurately reflect whether communications of the senders in the sending domain are wanted and when the trust level assigned by the sending domain to a received communication indicates that its sender is trusted not to send unwanted communications, forwarding the communication to a recipient in the receiving domain; and when the assigned confidence level indicates that the trust levels assigned by the sending domain do not accurately reflect whether communications of the senders in the sending domain are wanted, blocking the forwarding of the received communication so that a determination can be made whether the received communication is not unwanted.