Patent ID: 8484296

Claim:
An apparatus for displaying an e-mail message having a plurality of recipients, the apparatus comprising: a processor; and a memory to store computer program instructions, the computer program instructions when executed on the processor cause the processor to perform operations comprising: setting a domain of a sender as an assigned domain; classifying each recipient of a plurality of recipients specified by an e-mail message to be sent by the sender, as one of trusted and suspect based on a domain of each recipient of the plurality of recipients matching the assigned domain and recipient information stored in a contact database, wherein the recipient information for each recipient of the plurality of recipients is compared against database entries associated with a suspect classification, wherein the recipient information includes an employee status, a geographic location of a business of a recipient, and a position of a recipient in a corporate hierarchy, wherein a particular combination of recipient information that causes a particular recipient to be considered as one of trusted and suspect is customizable by a user and wherein the database entries associated with the suspect classification comprise a particular geographic location and a particular position level within the corporate hierarchy; presenting, for display, a specific recipient of the plurality of recipients using a first visual cue if the specific recipient of the plurality of recipients is classified as suspect; presenting, for display, the specific recipient of the plurality of recipients using a second visual cue if the specific recipient of the plurality of recipients is classified as trusted; reordering the plurality of recipients within a recipient list of the e-mail message and displaying a recipient list that has been reordered showing all recipients classified as being trusted before all recipients classified as being suspect within the recipient list; presenting, for display, a notification that a first recipient of the plurality of recipients is missing recipient information that allows the first recipient of the plurality of recipients to be classified as one of trusted and suspect and displaying a prompt for the user to designate the first recipient of the plurality of recipients as being one of trusted and suspect; and providing a reply to trusted option to compose an e-mail message addressed to only a subset of the recipients classified as being trusted when selected.