Patent ID: 8521825

Claim:
A computer program product for ranking potential recipients of electronic messages, the computer program product comprising: one or more computer-readable tangible storage devices and program instructions stored on at least one of the one or more storage devices, the program instructions comprising: program instructions to direct a computer to search an electronic message, which is a response to a prior electronic message and was sent from a user address to which the prior electronic message was sent, for key words indicative of the user address being improper in the prior electronic message; program instructions to, in response to the key words not indicating to the computer that the user address was improper in the prior electronic message, increase an activity score wherein a ranking for the user address is derived in part from the activity score and indicates a probability that the user address is a legitimate addressee for electronic messages subsequently created by a creator of the prior electronic message, and wherein in response to the key words indicating to the computer that the user address was improper in the prior electronic message, the activity score is not increased so that the ranking of the user address indicates a lesser probability that the user address is a legitimate addressee for electronic messages subsequently created by the creator of the prior electronic message than if the key words did not indicate to the computer that the user address was improper in the prior electronic message; and program instructions to, in response to receiving, from the creator of the prior electronic message, one or more characters of the user address in an address field of a form for a subsequent electronic message, display, in association with the form, one or more complete addresses that correspond to the one or more characters entered, including the user address, as potential legitimate addresses for the electronic message, and indicate the ranking of the user address in comparison to another of the one or more complete addresses.