Patent ID: 7757288

Claim:
A computer implemented method comprising the steps of: using a computer to perform steps comprising: examining an e-mail stream; identifying at least one suspicious e-mail message in the e-mail stream; responsive to identifying at least one e-mail message as being suspicious, inverting at least one response to an address from which identified suspicious e-mail originated, wherein the inverting comprises, responsive to a target address of the suspicious e-mail message pointing to an existing recipient, returning an error code to the originating address indicating that the recipient does not exist; and performing at least one additional step from a group of steps consisting of: analyzing the suspicious e-mail message; quarantining the suspicious e-mail message; deleting the suspicious e-mail message; blocking the suspicious e-mail message; generating at least one rule concerning the suspicious e-mail message; forwarding the suspicious e-mail message to a remote site; and transmitting information concerning the suspicious e-mail message to a repository accessible to other computing devices.