Abstract: An apparatus and method is provided for obtaining message context information regardless of whether or not the sender includes context information, such as full name, address, telephone number, etc. The context can be stored separately from a message and retrieved when the message is read by a recipient when requested. The context might be stored in an indexed database or repository using either a key field provided by the sender or using the fields present in the message for other purposes. The latter approach is useful for finding context information in legacy messages and messages where the sender has taken no action to supply context information. If a key field is not provided by the sender, the "From:" and "Organization:" header fields can be used. In order to populate the database or repository, the domain name portion of the "From:" header field can be used as an index into a "whois" search and the "Organization" name can be passed to a telephone book search engine.

Abstract: Markup language news posting is provided by imbedded headers pointing to markup language component files which are either directly included as attachments or indirectly included by universal resource locators included in a header of a posted file. A fallback message is included with the posted file so that the article is intelligible to readers which are not markup language aware. Markup language electronic mail messaging is accomplished in a similar manner.