Apparatus and method for handling electronic mail

• US 7,328,250 B2
• Filed: 06/29/2001
• Issued: 02/05/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/2001
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Nokia, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Nokia, Inc. (Nokia Corporation)
• Inventors: Wang, Bing
• Primary Examiner(s): Wiley; David
• Assistant Examiner(s): JEAN GILLES, JUDE
• Application Number:
  US09/895,532
• Publication Number:
  US 20040199585A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,412 Days
• Field of Search: 709220-229, 709/207, 713200-201, 707/10
• US Class Current: 709/207
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/212 using filtering or selective blocking

Abstract

A mail transfer agent adapted for determining the disposition of incoming e-mail from a sender includes a penalty count filter module which functions on the basis of current communication system resource usage, such as the number of concurrent TCP connections being maintained, and penalty counts assigned for cumulative undesirable sender activity such as sending large e-mail files. The penalty count filter module can operate in a selective-rejection state accepting e-mail from senders without a penalty count and randomly accepting other e-mail, and in a random-rejection state rejecting all e-mail from senders with a penalty count and randomly rejecting other e-mail. The rejection rates can be increased or decreased in response to a detected increase or decrease in the usage of system resources.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining a sender identifier based on a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with said sender identifier, wherein determining said cumulative penalty count value comprises assessing a penalty count value to said sender identifier for an undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status, and said operating state is a number of the group consisting of;

a normal operating state, a selective-rejection operating state, and a random-rejection operating state,

wherein, for said selective-rejection state, if said cumulative penalty count value has a nonzero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises;

specifying a rejection factor;

generating a random number; and

randomly rejecting the incoming e-mail on the basis of said rejection factor and said random number, and

wherein said step of randomly rejecting comprises accepting the incoming e-mail if said random number is greater than said rejection factor and rejecting the incoming e-mail if said random number is not greater than said rejection factor.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein said step of determining the sender identifier comprises the step of ascertaining an IP address for the sender.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein said step of determining the sender identifier comprises the step of associating the sender with a peer IP address of a TCP connection associated with the sender.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein said cumulative penalty count value comprises an activity penalty count charged to the sender for current undesirable sender activity and a time-dependent penalty count determined from previous undesirable sender activity.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein said time-dependent penalty count comprises a zero value subsequent to a pre-established retention period.

7. The method of claim 5 wherein said time-dependent penalty count comprises a prior activity penalty count value reduced by a time-dependent decay factor.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein said undesirable activity comprises a member of the group consisting of:

sending a large number of e-mails, sending emails of relatively large sizes, using a relatively large amount of TCP connection time, and causing a TCP timeout.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein said system overall resource usage status is a function of a member of the group consisting of:

the number of concurrent TCP connections being maintained, the number of e-mail files in an incoming message queue, and the amount of disk space being utilized for an incoming message queue.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein, for said selective-rejection state, if said cumulative penalty count value has a zero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises the step of accepting the incoming e-mail.

4. A method comprising:

determining a sender identifier based on a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with said sender identifier, wherein determining said cumulative penalty count value comprises assessing a penalty count value to said sender identifier for an undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status, and said operating state is a number of the group consisting of;

a normal operating state, a selective-rejection operating state, and a random-rejection operating state,

wherein, for said selective-rejection state, if said cumulative penalty count value has a nonzero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises;

specifying a rejection factor;

generating a random number; and

randomly rejecting the incoming e-mail on the basis of said rejection factor and said random number, and

wherein said step of specifying the rejection factor comprises determining a rejection factor value based on the system overall resource usage status.

10. A method comprising:

determining a sender identifier based on a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with said sender identifier, wherein determining said cumulative penalty count value comprises assessing a penalty count value to said sender identifier for an undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status, and said operating state is a number of the group consisting of;

a normal operating state, a selective-rejection operating state, and a random-rejection operating state,

wherein, for said random-rejection state, if said cumulative penalty count value has a nonzero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises rejecting the incoming e-mail.

11. A method comprising:

determining a sender identifier based on a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with said sender identifier, wherein determining said cumulative penalty count value comprises assessing a penalty count value to said sender identifier for an undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status, and said operating state is a number of the group consisting of;

a normal operating state, a selective-rejection operating state, and a random-rejection operating state,

wherein, for said selective-rejection state, if said cumulative penalty count value has a zero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises;

deriving an overall resource usage factor;

generating a random number; and

randomly rejecting the incoming e-mail on the basis of said overall resource usage factor, said random number, and said cumulative penalty count value, and

wherein said step of randomly rejecting comprises accepting the incoming e-mail if said random number is greater than a product of said overall resource usage factor and said cumulative penalty count value, and rejecting the incoming e-mail if said random number is not greater than said product of said overall resource usage factor and said cumulative penalty count value.

13. The method of claim 11 wherein said overall resource usage factor is increased if a system overall resource usage status increases and said resource usage factor is decreased if said system overall resource usage status decreases.

14. A method comprising:

identifying an e-mail sender by determining a sender IP address based of an incoming email;

obtaining a previous sender penalty count value calculated for said sender IP address, wherein said previous sender penalty count value is based at least in part on previous undesirable activity performed by the sender;

accepting or rejecting the incoming e-mail based on said previous sender penalty count value; and

updating said previous sender penalty count value by;

reducing said previous sender penalty count value by a decay factor to yield a reduced sender penalty count value, said decay factor being a function of a pre-established retention period; and

adding an activity penalty count value to said reduced sender penalty count value to yield an updated sender penalty count value, said activity penalty count value calculated as a function of current sender e-mail activities.

19. The method of claim 14 wherein said previous sender penalty count value is determined from undesirable sender activity occurring over a pre-established retention period.

20. The method of claim 19 wherein said undesirable activity comprises a member of the group consisting of:

sending a large number of e-mails, sending e-mails of relatively large sizes, using a relatively large amount of TCP connection time, and causing a TCP timeout.

21. The method of claim 14 wherein said decay factor is further a function of the time interval between calculation of said previous sender penalty count value and calculation of said activity penalty count value.

15. The method of 14 further comprising the steps of:

maintaining a behavior trace table entry for the e-mail sender; and

determining said previous sender penalty count from said behavior trace table.

16. The method of claim 15 further comprising the step of updating sender behavior values in said trace table entry in response to receipt of a sender e-mail.

17. The method of claim 16 wherein said sender behavior values include a member of the group consisting of:

the number of e-mails, the total size of e-mails, and the total TCP connection time.

18. A method comprising:

identifying an e-mail sender by determining a sender IP address based of an incoming email;

obtaining a previous sender penalty count value calculated for said sender IP address, wherein said previous sender penalty count value is based at least in part on previous undesirable activity performed by the sender;

accepting or rejecting the incoming e-mail based on said previous sender penalty count value;

maintaining a behavior trace table entry for the e-mail sender;

determining said previous sender penalty count from said behavior trace table;

updating sender behavior values in said trace table entry in response to receipt of a sender e-mail by;

reducing said behavior trace table value by a time-dependent decay factor; and

adding a current behavior trace table value to said corresponding reduced behavior trace table value;

wherein said time-dependent decay factor is a function of the time interval between the last two updates of said behavior trace table entry and a pre-established retention period.

22. A method comprising:

establishing an identity of a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with said identity, wherein said cumulative penalty count value is based at least in part on previous undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and the system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said operating state comprises a selective-rejection state, and wherein if said cumulative penalty count has nonzero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises;

specifying a rejection factor;

generating a random number; and

randomly rejecting the incoming e-mail on the basis of said rejection factor and said random number, and

wherein said step of randomly rejecting comprises accepting the incoming e-mail if said random number is greater than said rejection factor and rejecting the incoming e-mail if said random number is not greater than said rejection factor.

23. The method of claim 22, wherein said step of establishing the identity of the sender comprises the step of ascertaining an IP address of the sender.

24. The method of claim 22, wherein said cumulative penalty count value comprises a prior penalty count value reduced by a time-dependent decay factor.

25. A method comprising:

establishing an identity of a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with-said identity, wherein said cumulative penalty count value is based at least in part on previous undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and the system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said operating state comprises a selective-rejection state, and wherein if said cumulative penalty count has nonzero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises;

specifying a rejection factor;

generating a random number; and

randomly rejecting the incoming e-mail on the basis of said rejection factor and said random number, and

wherein said rejection factor is increased if said system overall resource usage status increases and said rejection factor is decreased if said system overall resource usage status decreases.

26. A method comprising:

establishing an identity of a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with said identity, wherein said cumulative penalty count value is based at least in part on previous undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and the system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said operating state comprises a random-rejection state, and wherein if said cumulative penalty count value has a nonzero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises rejecting the incoming e-mail.

27. A method comprising:

establishing an identity of a sender of an incoming email;

determining a cumulative penalty count value associated with said identity, wherein said cumulative penalty count value is based at least in part on previous undesirable activity performed by the sender;

retrieving a system overall resource usage status associated with the communication device; and

processing the incoming e-mail on the basis of said cumulative penalty count value and the system overall resource usage status,

wherein said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises assigning an operating state to the communication device, said operating state being a function of said system overall resource usage status,

wherein said operating state comprises a selective-rejection state, and wherein if said cumulative penalty count has zero value, said step of processing the incoming e-mail comprises;

specifying a rejection factor;

generating a random number; and

randomly rejecting the incoming e-mail on the basis of said rejection factor and said random number, and

wherein said step of randomly rejecting comprises accepting the incoming e-mail if said random number is greater than a product of said resource usage factor and said cumulative penalty count value, and rejecting the incoming e-mail if said random number is not greater than said product of said resource usage factor and said cumulative penalty count value.

28. The method of claim 27 wherein said resource usage factor is increased if said system overall resource usage status increases and said resource usage factor is decreased if said system overall resource usage status decreases.