Patent ID: 7613776

Claim:
A method of controlling aspects of communications between a user and senders: maintaining, on one or more computers, a list of identities associated with a user; receiving, at the one or more computers, one or more e-mails from an entity and directed to the user; detecting, at the one or more computers, one or more actions performed by the user on the received one or more e-mails from the entity, the actions supporting an inference that the entity is associated with the user and including at least one of moving at least one of the received e-mails from a first folder to a second folder or leaving at least one of the received e-mails open for a predetermined period of time; determining, at the one or more computers, that the entity is associated with the user based, at least in part, on the detected actions performed by the user on the received one or more e-mails that support an inference that the entity is associated with the user, wherein determining that the entity is associated with the user includes: associating, at the one or more computers, a score with each of the detected actions performed by the user on the received one or more e-mails from the entity, the score indicating a strength of the action in supporting an inference that the entity is associated with the user; aggregating, at the one or more computers, the associated scores of detected actions performed by the user on the received one or more e-mails from the entity; comparing, at the one or more computers, the aggregated score with a threshold score; and determining, at the one or more computers, that the entity is associated with the user when the aggregated score exceeds the threshold score; adding, at the one or more computers, the entity to the maintained list when the entity is determined to be associated with the user based, at least in part, on the detected actions performed on the received one or more e-mails that support an inference that the entity is associated with the user; receiving, at the one or more computers, one or more e-mails directed to the user; identifying, at the one or more computers, senders of the received e-mails; comparing, at the one or more computers, the identified senders to the maintained list of identities associated with the user to determine which of the senders are included in the maintained list; controlling, using the one or more computers, aspects of communications between the user and the senders based on which of the senders are included in the maintained list.