Patent ID: 7610341

Claim:
An email system for providing email service to a user, comprising: a computer device of the user configured with a plurality of detection mechanisms that detect undesired email messages that have been received by the user from an email server, the computer device configured to tag a received email message with a marker indicating that that the email message is addressed to a child user, the computer device further configured to tag a received email message with a marker indicating that an email message was detected by a particular detection mechanism as being undesired; a user interface installed on the computer device and configured to visually represent a plurality of mail folders associated with a plurality of users that access email messages using the user interface, the plurality of users comprising at least the child user and the user designated to regulate the child user's access to his or her undesired email messages, the plurality of mail folders comprising at least an inbox folder for the child user and an inbox folder and an undesired mail folder for the user, wherein undesired email messages for the child user are represented as being located in the user's undesired mail folder; and a display device coupled to the computer device, the user interface configured to visually represent that a particular undesired email message was detected using a particular detection mechanism, wherein each of the detection mechanisms is represented using a different visual representation on the display device and the user interface upon detecting a drag and drop operation to move an email message from an inbox folder of the user to a designated folder where the undesired email messages are stored prompts for the moved email message to be marked as a type of undesired email message that is associated with one of the detection mechanisms, the user interface further configured to visually represent in the undesired mail folder of the user an undesired email message intended for the child user having both a child marker and a distinct marker of a particular detection mechanism in a different manner than undesired email messages intended for the user having only the distinct marker for the particular detection mechanism.