KR20030087787A - Selective E-mail Delivery Utilizing Personal Identifier - Google Patents

Abstract

E-mail delivery allows e-mail users to reduce the number of spam e-mails received without having to manage multiple e-mail accounts, in order to prevent normal information acquisition from information providers such as insurance companies and card companies in the process. Way. The optional e-mail delivery method of the present invention is implemented in an e-mail server that stores the e-mail received from the external mail server via the Internet in the recipient's inbox and provides the recipient upon request. Each time a new mail is received, the e-mail server determines whether the received mail contains a predetermined personal identifier other than the recipient address and whether the included personal identifier is correct. If the personal identifier is included and correct, the e-mail server stores the received mail in the inbox and provides the received mail to the recipient when requested by the recipient of the received mail.

Description

Selective E-mail Delivery Utilizing Personal Identifier}

The present invention relates to a method for providing an e-mail service through the Internet, and more particularly, to a method for processing an e-mail in a receiving mail server.

With the spread of the Internet, the number of e-mail users and accounts over the Internet has been increasing at a rapid pace, and many individuals communicate messages through e-mails unless official behavior is required. Furthermore, these e-mails are widely used not only for the transfer of information between individuals, but also for transferring information between individuals and groups, and advertisements are typical of such applications. Advertisers via e-mail have shown a sharp increase in recent years due to the advantages that the cost is cheaper and the advertisement effect is relatively higher than that of other advertisement media.

In general, spam or junk mail sent indiscriminately by the sender without the consent of a large number of recipients who have nothing to do with them can waste a lot of time and money for the recipient to read or process it. It is forcing. E-mail recipients often discard e-mails sent by service providers, such as insurance companies or card companies, that are related to them. It can be said that it causes side effects that interfere with the information provider's normal customer management information provision.

In order to curb spam that is becoming a social problem, various measures have been prepared and implemented at the executive level. However, most spammers do not send these mails continuously, but often or occasionally. Instead of sending them directly through their ISP's mail server, they use another mail server as a relay server. Since the user of the relay server often disguises itself as sending an advertisement mail, it is not so easy to regulate or block it by filtering.

Accordingly, e-mail users sometimes operate multiple mail accounts separately for receiving spam mails. In this case, it is cumbersome to remember addresses and passwords for each account. On the other hand, Patent Application No. 2002-30704 (patent of the invention: the anti-spam service system and method using a virtual e-mail address) published on April 25, 2002, filed by Katie Co., Ltd. has a number of virtual electronic While there is a system and method of providing a mail address so that each user can use a different virtual e-mail address according to the purpose, in this case, it is inconvenient for the user to remember several mail addresses and remember the purpose. Will remain.

The present invention is to solve the above problems, it is possible for the e-mail user to reduce the number of spam mail received without operating multiple mail accounts separately, in this process from information providers such as insurance companies or card companies The technical problem is to provide an e-mail delivery method such that normal information acquisition is not disturbed.

1 is a view showing an example of a network environment of a mail server for implementing the present invention.

2 is a block diagram of one embodiment of the incoming mail server shown in FIG.

Figure 3 is a flow chart showing in more detail the e-mail delivery method of the present invention carried out by the receiving mail server shown in FIG.

The selective e-mail delivery method of the present invention for achieving the above technical problem is to store the e-mail received from the external mail server via the Internet in the recipient's inbox and provide to the recipient when the recipient's request It is implemented in Each time a new mail is received, the e-mail server determines whether the received mail contains a predetermined personal identifier other than the recipient address and whether the included personal identifier is correct. If the personal identifier is included and correct, the e-mail server stores the received mail in the inbox and provides the received mail to the recipient when requested by the recipient of the received mail.

As the identifier, a name, a social security number, or a combination thereof or data encrypted thereof may be used. This identifier can be easily inserted by the mail sender. In particular, in applying the present invention, it is preferable that each user's mail address is a telephone number of each user, in particular, a telephone number of a wireless terminal. This is because the wireless terminal telephone number is an important "address asset" of each individual and can be said to be unique data of the individual distinguished from others. In particular, the present invention is preferably implemented by a wireless communication service provider or a closely related portal service provider due to affiliation or other factors, since the access to the entire "address asset" is easy to implement.

Hereinafter, with reference to the accompanying drawings will be described in detail a preferred embodiment of the present invention.

1 shows an example of a network environment of a mail server system 10 for implementing the present invention. The mail server system 10 includes an outgoing mail server 12 that allows a user to send e-mail to an external recipient, and an incoming mail server 14 that allows the user to receive e-mail from the outside. A mail client is installed in the user terminal 20 that can access the mail server 10 through the Internet, so that the user can use the mail client to send e-mails to others and receive e-mails sent by others. have.

The mail client is a web browser when the e-mail service provided by the mail server 10 is a webmail method. The mail client is an Outlook Express when the e-mail service provided by the mail server 10 is a POP3 method. Express (trademark) or Netscape Messenger (trademark).

The e-mail received by the mail client of the user terminal 20 arrives at the receiving mail server 14 of the mail server system 10 directly from an external mail server 30, 40 or via one or more servers. The receiving mail server 14 provides the mail contents to the mail client in accordance with the request of the mail client. In the drawings and the following description, the mail server 30 of the external mail servers 30 and 40 has a certain contractual relationship with the user, such as an insurance company, a card company, or a public institution, and has personal information of the user. Suppose it is a server of an operator that provides information periodically or aperiodically. On the contrary, it is assumed that the mail server 40 is a spammer's server for sending spam mails.

In one embodiment of the present invention, the receiving mail server 14 of the mail server system 10 stores the e-mail from the external mail server 30, which provides useful information based on the user's personal information, in the inbox. When the user's request is provided to the user, but the spam mail from the external mail server 40 is prevented from being delivered to the user and will reply to the sender. According to a preferred embodiment, the operator of the external mail server 30 sends a mail by inserting a certain personal identifier into the mail header according to the prior guidance of the operator of the mail server system 10, and receives the mail server of the mail server system 10. (14) determines whether to receive or reply to the corresponding mail based on the presence and validity of such a personal identifier. Table 1 shows an example of a header structure of an e-mail suitable for receiving by the receiving mail server 14 of the mail server system 10 according to the present invention.

Return-Path: <return5@mail.pp21.org> Received: from mail.pp21.org ([211.239.125.110]) by nate.com (8.11.2 / 8.11.2) with SMTP id g41Ekn208241for <0112651660 @ nate. com>; Wed, 1 May 2002 23:46:49 + 0900Message-Id: <200205011446.g41Ekn208241@nate.com> From: "Civil Enforcement Bureau of Participation in the Solidarity"0112651660@nate.com> Subject: [Member Only Newsletter # 6] Building on Learning Date: Wed, 1 May 2002 23:46:49 + 0900MIME-Version: 1.0Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Recipient: Hong Gil - dong X-Priority: 3X-MSMail-Priority: NormalX-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3155.0 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3155.0 Content-Type: multipart / mixed; boundary = "_ nextpart_1020262261094" Status: This is a multi-part message in MIME format .--_ nextpart_1020262261094Content-Type: text / html; charset = "euc-kr" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit <! DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-/ / W3C // DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional // EN "><HTML><HEAD><TITLE> Beautiful People # </ TITLE><META ....

Here, <Return-Path> represents an address to be returned when the mail is not normally received, and <Received> represents a server path to which the mail is delivered. <Message-Id> is a unique number attached to the computer that originally sent the mail, and <From>, <To>, <Subject>, and <Date> indicate the sender, recipient, subject, and sending time of the mail, respectively. <MIME-Version> represents the version of the Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extentions, <Content-Type> represents the type of content being transferred, and <Content-Transfer-Encoding> is the Indicates the encoding method.

On the other hand, as shown in Table 1, the header of the mail includes headers starting with the string 'X-', which headers can be arbitrarily used by the sender's mail client. In particular, according to the present invention, the external mail server 30 includes the personal identifier of the mail recipient " Hong Gil-dong &quot; in the header beginning with [X-Recipient], and sends the mail to the receiving mail server of the mail server system 10 ( 14) can use this header to identify that the message is not spam.

In a preferred embodiment, the mail server system 10 is operated by a wireless carrier such as SK Telecom Co., Ltd. or an internet operator in close cooperation with a wireless carrier such as Nate.com. However, this is merely an example, and the present invention is not limited to the mail server operated by such an operator, and may be applied to other portal sites, ISPs, or corporate mail servers. to be. On the other hand, the recipient who receives the mail delivery service by the receiving mail server 14 of the mail server system 10 has a mail address composed of his or her wireless terminal (eg, mobile phone) number. In the example of Table 1, a mail is delivered to a user named Hong Gil-dong using the address 0112651660@nate.com.

2 shows an example of the incoming mail server 14 shown in FIG. The message inbox 50 stores received messages in each user's account, and the user information table 52 stores personal information of each user, such as a mail address, a password and a mobile phone number. The registration information of the user information table 52 may be provided from a wireless communication provider in advance or may be input from a user. When a new mail arrives from an external mail server, the message transmission / reception unit 54 stores the message transmission box 50 through the filtering unit 56 and the inbox management unit 58. In addition, the message transceiving unit 54 receives and stores the message stored in the message inbox 50 via the inbox managing unit 58 when the mail client of the user requests the received mail information.

When a new message arrives from an external mail server through the message transceiving unit 54, the filtering unit 56 analyzes the header of the message to determine whether the personal identifier exists and whether the personal identifier is legal. If a personal identifier exists in the received message header and is legitimate, the filtering unit 56 stores the message in the message receiving box 50 via the receiving management unit 58. The legal personal identifier here means the same as that registered in the user information table 52. On the other hand, if the personal identifier does not exist or is not legal in the received message header, the filtering unit 56 returns the message to the sender via the mail server 12 sending the message.

3 shows in more detail the e-mail delivery method of the present invention performed by the receiving mail server 14.

First, the receiving mail server 14 continuously monitors whether a new message is received from an external mail server (step 100). If a new message is received, the filtering unit 56 determines whether a personal identifier header exists in the received message (step 102). If it is determined in step 102 that the personal identifier does not exist, the filtering unit 56 sends the message to the sender via the mail server 12 (step 104). On the other hand, if it is determined that the personal identifier exists in the message received in step 102, the filtering unit 56 determines whether the personal identifier included in the header is the same as that registered in the user information table 52. (Step 106).

If it is determined in step 106 that the personal identifier included in the header is not the same as that registered in the user information table 52, the filtering unit 56 sends a message to the sender via the mail server 12 that sends the message. Return (step 104). On the other hand, if it is determined in step 106 that the personal identifier included in the header is the same as that registered in the user information table 52, the filtering unit 56 receives the message via the management unit 58 receiving the header message. And store in step 50 (step 108).

When the message is stored in the message inbox 50 as described above, when the user's mail client connects and requests the received mail information (step 110), the message transmitting and receiving unit 54 is stored in the message inbox 50. The message is read through the management unit 58 and provided to the client (step 112).

Those skilled in the art to which the present invention pertains will understand that the present invention can be implemented in other specific forms without changing the technical spirit or essential features. For example, in the above description, only the case where the mail address assigned to each user is composed of a wireless terminal number is described, but the present invention is not necessarily limited thereto and may be an alphanumeric address in a general manner. In addition, assign both a wireless terminal number and a second address of alphanumeric, use the second address for personal use, and use the mobile terminal number for official purposes and / or for purposes that are likely to receive spam mail. You can also use addresses. In this case, the message inbox can also be shared.

Therefore, the above-described embodiments are to be understood as illustrative in all respects and not as restrictive. The scope of the present invention is shown by the following claims rather than the detailed description, and all changes or modifications derived from the meaning and scope of the claims and their equivalents should be construed as being included in the scope of the present invention. do.

As described above, according to the present invention, when the receiving mail server delivers the received mail, the delivery service performs only when the personal identifier of the recipient is included in the header.

Spammers who send spam usually buy lists from companies that create email distribution lists when selecting spammers, but often use software to automatically collect and send unspecified email addresses in batches. many. Thus, the likelihood that spammers will obtain the personal identifier intended by the present invention with the address is significantly lowered, so that the e-mail user receives less spam. In addition, the normal acquisition of useful information provided by information providers, such as insurance companies or credit card companies, will not be interrupted in this process.

As a result, the present invention enables a mail service provider to implement a strong anti-spam policy, as well as to provide a more reliable mail service for mail service users.

Claims (3)

An e-mail server that stores an e-mail received from an external mail server via the Internet in a recipient's inbox and provides the recipient upon request of the recipient, Determining whether a new mail is received; If a new mail is received, determining whether the received mail includes a predetermined personal identifier other than a recipient address; Determining whether the personal identifier is correct; If the personal identifier is correct, storing the received mail in the inbox; And Providing the received mail to the recipient if the recipient of the received mail requires it; E-mail delivery method comprising a. The method of claim 1, wherein said personal identifier is any one selected from the group consisting of a name, a social security number, and a combination thereof. 3. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein said address is a telephone number of said recipient.