Recipient address masking in computer communications

• US 20030105823A1
• Filed: 12/03/2001
• Published: 06/05/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 11/30/2000
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Tjong, Anthony L., Ally, Afshan, Roy-Diclemente, Michael S.
• Granted Patent: US 8,838,698 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/10 Office automation; Time management
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/48 Message addressing, e.g. address format or anonymous messages, aliases
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/56 Unified messaging, e.g. interactions between e-mail, instant messaging or converged IP messaging [CPM]
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/32416 Storage of instructions or retrieval of prestored instructions

Abstract

A messaging system for masking addresses from sending processes. The messaging system maintains a message service profile and a service-address profile. The messaging system accesses recipient data. Sending processes are able to send messages to the messaging system in a form such that each message has an message type and list of recipients. The messaging system is able to determine which of a set of sending services is to be used to send the message, based on the message-service profile. The service-address profile stores information about where in the structure of recipient data the appropriate address for the selected service is located. The addresses corresponding to the named recipients, for the services determined by the messaging system, can be retrieved by from recipient data. The message system can then provide the recipient address to the appropriate sending services to send the message.

Claims

1. A messaging system for use in association with a set of sending services, the messaging system comprising,

means for accepting a message and an associated set of recipient identifiers from a sender process,

a message-service profile comprising means for specifying one or more of the set of sending services corresponding to the accepted message and the associated set of recipient identifiers,

means for retrieving from a set of recipient identifiers and recipient addresses, those recipient addresses corresponding to the set of recipient identifiers and corresponding to the specified sending services,

means to pass the message to the specified sending services for delivery to the retrieved recipient addresses.

2. The messaging system of claim 1 further comprising a service-address profile for linking a given sending service to a corresponding subset of recipient addresses in the set of recipient identifiers and recipient addresses.

3. The messaging system of claim 2 in which the set of recipient identifiers and recipient addresses is maintained in a relational database table and in which the service-address profile defines in which field in the table recipient addresses corresponding to each of the set of sending services are located.

4. The messaging system of claim 1 in which the message has an associated message type and in which the message-service profile specifies the sending services based on the message type.

5. The messaging system of claim 4 in which the message type is provided to the messaging system by the sender process.

6. The messaging system of claim 1 further comprising means for an administrator to create and maintain the message-service profile.

7. A computer program product for messaging, the computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable code means embodied in said medium, and comprising computer readable program code means for implementing a messaging system for use in association with a set of sending services, the messaging system comprising,

means for accepting a message and an associated set of recipient identifiers from a sender process,

a message-service profile comprising means for specifying one or more of the set of sending services corresponding to the accepted message and the associated set of recipient identifiers,

means for retrieving from a set of recipient identifiers and recipient addresses, those recipient addresses corresponding to the set of recipient identifiers and corresponding to the specified sending services,

means to pass the message to the specified sending services for delivery to the retrieved recipient addresses

14. The computer program product of claim 7 wherein said computer usable medium comprises a computer-readable signal bearing medium.

15. The program product of claim 14 wherein said medium is a recordable data storage medium.

16. The program product of claim 15 wherein the medium is a modulated carrier signal.

17. The program product of claim 16 wherein the signal is a transmission over a network.

8. A method for delivering a message from a sending process to defined recipients using one or more of a set of specified sending services, the method comprising the steps of

a) obtaining the message, and a set of recipient identifiers corresponding to the defined recipients, from the sending process,

b) specifying one or more of the set of sending services to be used to send the message,

c) retrieving from a set of recipient data a recipient address for each recipient identifier, specified sending service pair,

d) passing the message, recipient identifier and corresponding retrieved recipient address to each of the specified sending services for delivery.

9. The method of claim 8 in which the step of specifying one or more of the set of sending services comprises a message-service profile look-up based on a defined message type, the message-service profile being defined to associate message types with sending services.

10. The method of claim 8 in which the step of retrieving recipient addresses comprises a service-address profile look-up for each specified sending service, the service-address profile being defined to link each sending service to a subset of address data in the set of recipient data.

11. A computer program product for delivering messages, the computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable code means embodied in said medium, and comprising computer readable program code means for carrying out the method of claim 8.

18. A computer program comprising computer program code means adapted to perform all the steps of claim 8 when said program is run on a computer system.

12. A messaging system for use in association with a set of sending services, the messaging system comprising,

means for accepting a message having an associated message type and an associated set of recipient identifiers from a sender process,

a message-service profile comprising means for specifying one or more of the set of sending services corresponding to the accepted message and the associated set of recipient identifiers, the message-service profile specifying the sending services based on the message type,

a service-address profile for linking a given sending service to a corresponding subset of recipient addresses in the set of recipient identifiers and recipient addresses.

means for retrieving from a set of recipient identifiers and recipient addresses, those recipient addresses corresponding to the set of recipient identifiers and corresponding to the specified sending services, the set of recipient identifiers and recipient addresses being maintained in a relational database table and the service-address profile defining in which field in the table recipient addresses corresponding to each of the set of sending services are located,

means to pass the message to the specified sending services for delivery to the retrieved recipient addresses.

13. A messaging system for masking recipient addresses, the messaging system comprising

means for accepting a message and associated recipient identifiers,

means for determining sending services and recipient addresses for use in delivering the message and

means for forwarding the message to the sending service for delivery to the recipient address.