Patent ID: 8527592

Claim:
A method, comprising the steps of: receiving a plurality of tuples at a reputation engine operating on a computing device coupled to a network, each of said tuples comprising pre-selected set of identifiers relating to an origin of a message received at a server of a messaging system, wherein each tuple comprises an identifier that is deemed to be trusted by the reputation engine, each of said tuples having a different granularity of identification of the origin of the received message; accessing, by the reputation engine, two or more reputation metrics in a database, each reputation metric associated with one of the plurality of tuples; associating each of the plurality of tuples with a different, respective granularity of identification of the origin of the received message, wherein a tuple comprising a combination of a user identifier and an Internet Protocol (IP) address is assigned a higher granularity than a tuple comprising a combination of a domain name and an IP address; calculating, at the reputation engine, a first value indicative of a likelihood that the received message is undesired using the two or more reputation metrics, wherein calculating the first value comprises overriding a first one of the two or more reputation metrics with a second one of the two or more reputation metrics, in response to the tuple of the second reputation metric being associated with a more finely grained identification of the origin of the received message than the tuple of the first reputation metric.