System and method for verifying delivery and integrity of electronic messages
First Claim
1. A method of transmitting a message from a sender to a recipient through a server acting as a message transport agent, including the steps at the server of:
- transmitting the message to the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent using a message transport protocol and recording at the server at least a portion of a dialog generated by the message transport protocol when the message is transmitted between the sender and the recipient through the server including those portions of the dialog in which the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent accepts or declines delivery of the transmitted message, storing a representation of the recorded at least a portion of the dialog, and returning to the sender the representation of the recorded at least a portion of the dialog as proof of the successful delivery or failure to deliver the message to the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A server transmits a message from a sender to a destination address. During transmission, the server and the destination address have a dialog constituting an attachment, via a particular one of SMTP and ESMTP protocols, concerning the message, the server and the destination address. The message passes through servers between the server and the destination address. This passage is included in the attachment. Verifiers are provided for the message and for the attachments. The verifiers may constitute encrypted hashes of the message and of the attachment. The sender receives the message, the attachments and the verifications from the server before authentication and transmits the message, the attachments and the verifiers to the server to obtain authentication by the server. The server operates on the message and the message verifier to authenticate the message and operates on the attachments and the attachments'"'"' verifier to verify the attachments.
41 Citations
20 Claims
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1. A method of transmitting a message from a sender to a recipient through a server acting as a message transport agent, including the steps at the server of:
- transmitting the message to the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent using a message transport protocol and recording at the server at least a portion of a dialog generated by the message transport protocol when the message is transmitted between the sender and the recipient through the server including those portions of the dialog in which the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent accepts or declines delivery of the transmitted message, storing a representation of the recorded at least a portion of the dialog, and returning to the sender the representation of the recorded at least a portion of the dialog as proof of the successful delivery or failure to deliver the message to the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent.
- View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
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11. A system for transmitting a message from a sender to a recipient through a server acting as a message transport agent, comprising:
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a server configured using programming commands to; receive a message from a sender and to transmit the message to a recipient'"'"'s message transport agent using a message transport protocol, record at the server at least a portion of a dialog generated by the message transport protocol when the message is transmitted between the sender and the recipient through the server including those portions of the dialog in which the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent accepts or declines delivery of the transmitted message, store a representation of the recorded at least a portion of the dialog in a memory associated with the server, and return to the sender the representation of the recorded at least a portion of the dialog as proof of the successful delivery or failure to deliver the message to the recipient'"'"'s message transport agent. - View Dependent Claims (12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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Specification