Patent ID: 7996910

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of protecting against an unintentional giveaway of sensitive data by a computer user to an illegitimate or unintended entity, the method comprising: monitoring data being entered by a computer user into a client application, wherein the client application includes a web page with an input form, and the monitoring comprises: determining whether a provider of a communication mechanism provided to the client application is an ISP; determining whether the provider is globally trusted, wherein globally trusted providers include web domains that are external to an ISP network that are known to the ISP to have trusted web pages with input forms; and determining whether the provider is personally trusted, wherein personally trusted providers include web domains that are known to a user of the client application to have trusted web pages with input forms; accessing a set of pattern generating functions; generating a set of string matching patterns by applying the set of pattern generating functions to sensitive data; determining that the data being entered into the client application matches one or more of the string matching patterns in the set of string matching patterns; and in response to determining that the data being entered into the client application matches one or more of the string matching patterns in the set of string matching patterns, performing one or more of the following actions: requesting that the computer user confirm a communication of the data; warning the computer user that communicating the data might result in an unintentional giveaway of sensitive data to an illegitimate or unintended entity; preventing the client application from communicating the data; or logging a communication of the data by the client application.