Patent ID: 7072942

Claim:
An email screening method comprising: defining an index having values that are assigned to various degrees of desirability that an email message can have, wherein the degrees of desirability extend from a low degree of desirability to a high degree of desirability; associating a plurality of parameters having parameter values with the various degrees of desirability, wherein at least some of the parameters do not depend on any message that is conveyed by any content of an email message; establishing a user interface through which a user can adjust individual parameter values that, in turn, establish a degree of desirability, and index values that themselves establish a degree of desirability that email messages must have in order to be saved to dedicated user storage locations; and evaluating, using a computing device comprising part of an email system in which, for at least some users of the system, a client user interface email environment is generated through use of HTML or web pages that are sent to client devices, incoming email messages against the index value that is defined by the user.