Method and System for Filtering Outgoing Email

• US 20130060863A1
• Filed: 09/01/2011
• Published: 03/07/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 09/01/2011
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: John D'Eri, Tim S. Kaufeldt
• Original Assignee: John D'Eri, Tim S. Kaufeldt
• Inventors: D'ERI, John, Kaufeldt, Tim S.
• Application Number:
  US13/224,006
• Publication Number:
  US 20130060863A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 709/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/253 Grammatical analysis; Style critique
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/107 Computer-aided management of electronic mailing [e-mailing]
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/212 using filtering or selective blocking

Abstract

A system, device and method to receive, from a user, an email to be sent to a recipient, determine whether the email contains one of a plurality of sensitive keywords, determine whether the email contains sensitive context content, approve the email to be sent to the recipient, if the email does not contain a sensitive keyword and if the email does not contain sensitive context content and reject the email, if the email contains a sensitive keyword or if the email contains sensitive context content.

Claims

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a set of instructions executable by a processor, the set of instructions being operable to:

receive, from a user, an email to be sent to a recipient;

determine whether the email contains one of a plurality of sensitive keywords;

determine whether the email contains sensitive context content;

approve the email to be sent to the recipient, if the email does not contain a sensitive keyword and if the email does not contain sensitive context content; and

reject the email, if the email contains a sensitive keyword or if the email contains sensitive context content.

2. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the instruction operable to reject the email contains sub-instructions operable to:

determine whether the rejection is a first rejection;

log the rejection;

notify the user of the rejection, if the rejection is a first rejection; and

quarantine the email, if the rejection is not a first rejection.

3. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 2, wherein the instruction operable to quarantine the email comprises sub-instructions operable to:

notify the user of the rejection; and

select one of;

taking no further action;

sending a low priority notification; and

sending a high priority notification.

4. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 3, wherein the selecting is based on a risk profile of the user.

5. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 4, wherein the risk profile is determined based on one of a position of the user, a gender of the user, an age of the user, a criminal history of the user, a length of employment of the user, a credit score of the user, a marital status of the user, a citizenship status of the user, a rejected email history of the user, and a quarantined email history of the user.

6. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 3, wherein the recipient of the selected one of the low priority notification and the high priority notification is selected based on a type of the sensitive keyword or sensitive context content.

7. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the determination of whether the email contains the sensitive keyword comprises comparing each of a plurality of words of the email to a list of keywords stored in a database, wherein the email is determined to contain the sensitive keyword if any of the words of the email matches any of the keywords.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the determination of whether the email contains sensitive context content further comprises:

parsing the email into one or more phrases; and

one of comparing contents of the email to a set of phrases stored in a database, comparing an intonation of the email to accepted intonation standards and comparing a grammar of the email to accepted grammatical standards.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium of claim 1, wherein the plurality of sensitive keywords and the sensitive context content are grouped into a plurality of modules, each of the modules corresponding to a type of sensitive content.

10. A system, comprising:

a filter module operating on a mail server that receives an email message from a user that is directed to a recipient; and

a review system receiving the email message from the filter module and determining whether the email message contains sensitive content including a sensitive keyword or sensitive context content and returning the email to the filter module,

wherein the filter module returns the email to the email server to send the email to the recipient if the email does not contain sensitive content, and

wherein the filter module rejects the email if the email contains sensitive content.

11. The system of claim 10, wherein, if the email is rejected, the filter module returns the email to the user with an indication that the email has been rejected.

12. The system of claim 11, wherein the indication includes a reason that the email has been rejected.

13. The system of claim 10, wherein the review system determines if the email has been previously rejected, and if the email has been previously rejected and is rejected again, the review system quarantines the email.

14. The system of claim 10, wherein the review system comprises hardware and software, and wherein the filter module is executed on a different hardware device from the review system.

15. The system of claim 10, further comprising:

a database storing an event log, the event log including a record for each of a plurality of previous emails received by the system.

16. The system of claim 15, wherein, for each of the plurality of emails, the record includes one of an event time, a rejection level, a rejection trigger, a system date, an origin time, a transmission time, a global identifier, an employee identifier, an origin IP address, a recipient email address, and a subject.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the employee identifier is determined based on one of a date of birth, a social security number, and a hire date.

18. A device, comprising:

a memory storing a plurality of sensitive keywords and information related to sensitive context content;

a processor receiving an email redirected from an email server, the email being directed from a user to a recipient, the processor comparing content of the email to the stored sensitive keywords and the information related to the sensitive context content and determining whether the content of the email includes sensitive content, wherein if the content of the email includes sensitive content, the processor provides an indication that the email is rejected so as not to be sent to the recipient and if the content of the email does not include sensitive content, the processor provides an indication that the email is cleared to be sent to the recipient.

19. The device of claim 18, wherein the content of the email includes one of a subject, a body, a signature and an attachment of the email.

20. The device of claim 18, wherein the processor receives and a plurality of emails and logs into the memory each email and a corresponding status of each email that includes whether each email has been rejected or cleared.

21. The device of claim 18, wherein the processor determines whether the rejection is a first rejection and quarantines the email, if the rejection is not a first rejection.

22. The device of claim 18, wherein the processor overrides the rejection based and clears the email based on an identification of the user.