Patent ID: 8719350

Claim:
A method for electronic mail (email) addressee verification, comprising: obtaining an email message including a plurality of email addresses; evaluating each email address of the email message against a database of suspect email addresses and a plurality of email rules, wherein at least one of the plurality of email rules includes an organizational rule, the organizational rule including determining if each email address in the plurality of email addresses has the same management chain as a sender of the email, wherein the evaluating is performed prior to the email message being sent, and wherein the evaluating includes determining if any of the email addresses in the plurality of email addresses are below a certain management level relative to other email addresses in the plurality of email addresses; assigning a score to each email address based on the evaluation, wherein the score assigned to each email address is related to a percentage of the plurality of email rules that each respective email address complies with; comparing the score assigned to each email address to an application specific threshold; flagging any suspect email address based on the comparison, wherein the flagging includes marking any suspect email address for evaluation by a user; and storing a suspect email address in the database of suspect email addresses.