Patent ID: 8452880

Claim:
A method for verifying intended content of an electronic message, the method comprising: accessing a Universal Resource Locator (URL) embedded within an email message to be sent to an email recipient by an email sender via a mail server, wherein the URL is directed to a web page; prior to the email message being sent, retrieving the webpage and computing a first digest value associated with said webpage at a first time, wherein said webpage is provided by a web server that is separate from said mail server and the first digest value is used to verify whether the webpage content has changed; upon accessing said webpage and computing said first digest value, sending said email message with said embedded URL and said first digest value to said email recipient, wherein said first digest value is attached to said email message; receiving said email message with said embedded URL; accessing said first digest value after the email message has been received; using said URL, accessing said webpage residing at a location separate from said email message; downloading contents of the webpage to the email recipient's computer system; computing a second digest value associated with said webpage based on the downloaded contents of the webpage at a second time, wherein the second digest value is used in conjunction with the first digest value to verify whether: the webpage content has changed, the URL is directed to a webpage that is different from the webpage which the URL was originally directed to, and the contents of the URL itself have changed; activating a second message digest engine and a comparator upon said receiving said email message; determining, by said second digest engine and said comparator, that said first digest value and said second digest value fail to match and verifying that the webpage content has changed, wherein said first and second digest values are checksum values, in response to determining that the first digest value and the second digest value fail to match, determining that the contents of the webpage at the second time have changed from the contents of the webpage at the first time; and in response to determining that said first digest value and said second digest value fail to match, blocking said email recipient access to said webpage and generating a warning message to the receiver indicating that the webpage has changed since it was sent from the email sender to the email recipient, wherein the blocking of the access to the webpage is to restrict display of the webpage, in response to the webpage having been changed since it was sent.