Patent ID: 7620690

Claim:
A method for providing privacy control in a communication system; receiving at a centralized processor a set of spam notices from a set of participants; identifying a set of advertisers from said set of spam notices, wherein said identifying step is comprised of parsing said spam notices at said centralized processor; determining at said centralized processor a set of unsubscribe mechanisms corresponding with said set of advertisers, wherein said determining step is comprised of automatically parsing and identifying key attributes associated with an unsubscribe function, and wherein said parsing and identifying further comprise the searching step selected from the group of steps consisting of: searching for an email address in said spam notices; searching for a reply action key attribute; searching for an email address in web pages listed in said spam notices; searching for request form key components in web pages listed in said spam report; searching for email subscription key components in web pages listed in said spam report; and searching for a one-click unsubscribe link; and sending from said centralized processor a set of unsubscribe requests to said set of advertisers according to said corresponding set of unsubscribe mechanisms.