Patent ID: 8150928

Claim:
A spam resistant e-mail system comprising: at least one e-mail managing computer connected to the Internet to communicate with users on user computers via an authenticated communication protocol in which a communication protocol authenticates the identity of an individual user as a sender without relying on an SMTP e-mail header designating the individual user as a sender, the e-mail managing computer and user computers executing stored programs to: establish authenticated communications between a given user and the e-mail managing computer using the authenticated communication protocol to establish the identity of the given user; allow the given user to form an initial trusted human chain listing other member users who have established communications with the e-mail managing computer using the authenticated communication protocol to establish the identity of the member users; produce an augmented trusted human chain for the given user by recursively adding other users linked to member users by trusted human chains of the member users; communicate e-mail messages using the authenticated communication protocol between the given user and one or more specified users only if the one or more specified users are in the given user's augmented trusted human chain and are member users wherein the e-mail managing computer and user computers further execute the stored programs to record for users in the augmented trusted human chain: a tree of the user based trusted human chains linking the users to the given user and a distance along this tree between any two users; and wherein this data is usable by the given user to manage the given user's augmented trusted human chain.