Patent ID: 7421498

Claim:
A system for handling an electronic communication, said system including a computer readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon, when executed by a computer processor, to perform a method: receiving the electronic communication; parsing the received electronic communication to identify URLs within the received electronic communication; for each identified URL, sending a request to a categorizing server system to identify the category assigned to each identified URL, said categorizing server system employing a URL database to cross reference the identified URL and to maintain URL categories; rating each identified URL as appropriate or inappropriate as a function of the identified category corresponding to each identified URL; and routing the electronic communication as a function of the rating of each identified URL, wherein the electronic communication is not routed to an addressee if the percentage of identified inappropriate URLs of the electronic communication relative to the total of identified inappropriate URLs of the electronic communication and identified appropriate URLs of the electronic communication is greater than a threshold amount, wherein the electronic communication is routed to the addressee if the percentage of identified inappropriate URLs of the electronic communication relative to the total of identified inappropriate URLs of the electronic communication and identified appropriate URLs of the electronic communication is less than or equal to the threshold amount, and wherein the routing includes a policy including an allow/block logic which determines to route the electronic communication to the addressee when the policy indicates that the electronic communication passes the allow logic and fails the block logic and which determines to inhibit routing the electronic communication to the addressee when the policy indicates that the electronic communication fails the allow logic and passes the block logic.