Patent ID: 8326931

Claim:
A method of receiving an encoded message at a computing device from a message sender device, the encoded message comprising a message header and a message body, the message header comprising one or more header fields, the method comprising: receiving the encoded message from the message sender device, wherein the encoded message comprises an encoded message body, the encoded message body comprising content of one or more protected header fields that was inserted at the message sender device into the message body prior to encoding and transmission of the message to the computing device; decoding the encoded message body; determining whether a disclaimer that indicates that one or more header fields have been protected is located in the message body after said decoding; when the disclaimer is located in the message body, removing the disclaimer from the message body, after having indicated at the computing device that one or more header fields of the message header have been protected; extracting the content of the one or more protected header fields that was inserted at the message sender device into the message body from the message body after said decoding; comparing the content of the one or more protected header fields extracted from the message body with a corresponding one or more header fields of the message header of the message as decoded by the computing device; and if said content of the one or more protected header fields that was inserted at the message sender device into the message body as extracted from the message body is different from the corresponding one or more header fields of the message header of the message as decoded by the computing device, indicating that the message has been tampered with.