Abstract: The present invention is an adaptive method for filtering spam by using the reputations associated with recipients of email messages to determine the reputations of message and content attributes, then using the attribute reputations to determine whether or not the email message is spam and then using the determination of spam to update the reputations associated with the recipients of the email message. The present invention can also be used in conjunction with existing spam algorithms. Optionally, training of existing spam algorithms may be implemented by the use of recipient reputations or training types derived from recipient reputations.

Abstract: The present invention is an adaptive method for filtering spam by using the reputations associated with recipients of email messages to determine the reputations of message and content attributes, then using the attribute reputations to determine whether or not the email message is spam and then using the determination of spam to update the reputations associated with the recipients of the email message. The present invention can also be used in conjunction with existing spam algorithms. Optionally, training of existing spam algorithms may be implemented by the use of recipient reputations or training types derived from recipient reputations.

Abstract: A method of creating a whitelist for processing received e-mail messages. A whitelist is created by software running at an e-mail recipient's computer. The whitelist is constructed using e-mail addresses stored by the recipient (for instance, in an “address book”) as well as using the To:, Cc:, and Bcc: information of e-mails sent by the recipient. The subject line of a received message is also checked to see if it matches the subject line of a message recently sent by the user. If so, the sender is added to the whitelist.