Patent ID: 8381262

Claim:
A method for use in managing delivery of messages over a network, comprising: for each message in a plurality of messages alleging to be from a given domain: when the respective message is digitally signed, authenticating the respective message, at least by verifying that the digitally signed message originated from the given domain associated with a sender's address of the message by using a public component of a public/private key pair that is accessible to a domain name server (DNS) associated with the domain; when the plurality of messages from the domain indicates that the domain is employing digitally signed messages above a threshold, then blocking messages alleging to be from the domain which are determined to be digitally unsigned while still allowing messages that are digitally signed and authenticated to be forwarded to a message recipient; when the plurality of messages from the domain indicates that the domain is employing digitally signed messages at or below the threshold, determining an outbound message server associated with each message; and when an outbound message server for a respective message is inconsistent with at least one message header of the respective message, blocking the message from being delivered to a recipient.