Patent ID: 8849856

Claim:
A method for managing operations associated with a discardable file, the method comprising: in a host to which a storage device is operatively coupled: associating a discardable file with an owner user ID of a first application that creates or downloads the discardable file, wherein the discardable file comprises unsolicited content that has not been requested by a user of the storage device and where the discardable file comprises a file that has been marked as discardable in a file system structure associated with the storage device and has been assigned a discarding priority level in advance of storing the discardable file; defining, with the first application associated with the owner user ID, a set of permissions for an additional user ID that is associated with the discardable file, where the additional user ID is associated with a second application and the set of permissions define whether the second application may access the discardable file and one or more actions that the second application may take with respect to the discardable file; receiving, from the second application associated with the additional user ID, a request to perform a conversion operation associated with the discardable file to convert the discardable file to a user file, where a user file is a file that a user of the storage device willingly stores in the storage device; determining whether the second application associated with the additional user ID may perform the conversion operation based on the set of permissions; and managing the conversion operation to convert the discardable file to a user file based on the determination.