Patent ID: 7373386

Claim:
A system for configuring access to an electronic mailbox comprising: a data store for storing configuration conventions related to configuration parameters used for accessing an electronic mailbox; and a mailbox interface module for receiving configuration information from a user that is limited in the configuration parameters required for accessing the electronic mailbox of the user, wherein said electronic mailbox interface module is operative for retrieving configuration conventions for a mailbox domain from the data store and generating original sets of possible configuration parameters based on the received configuration information and the stored configuration conventions, the stored configuration conventions are sets of email expressions formed by symbols that symbolically represent the stored configuration conventions used by email providers for the configuration parameters used for accessing the electronic mailbox of the user and operative with the data store for storing the configuration conventions, and attempting access to the electronic mailbox and generating new sets of potentially valid configuration parameters if attempts for accessing the electronic mailbox of the user from the original sets of possible configuration parameters were unsuccessful, wherein the mailbox interface module is operative for generating a subset of the original sets of possible configuration parameters by using heuristics of likelihood that the configuration conventions are valid for accessing the electronic mailbox for a mail domain, and the heuristics comprises tracking statistics stored within the data store about a number of attempts and percentage of successes using the configuration conventions.