Abstract: A system and method for establishing temporary electronic mail (e-mail) accounts is configured to operate with classified newspaper advertising. One of the aspects of the present invention is a file handling method that automates the process of establishing the e-mail accounts through interaction with a publisher's system for taking orders for classified advertisements. Typical newspaper classified advertising comprises two or three lines of text which provide only basic information about an item for sale. With the present invention, advertisers would be offered the option of creating a special e-mail account with a duration tied to the run of the advertisement. The e-mail accounts would be used to receive inquiries about the item for sale. The e-mail account could be also be configured to auto-respond to each incoming message with additional descriptive information about the item being offered for sale. Responders could learn more about the item, and thereby avoid the necessity of calling the seller.

Abstract: A telecommunications system (100) includes a service provider node (116) that is capable of forwarding electronic mail messages addressed to a user of the service provider node. The forwarding process is controlled by a message transfer agent (202), a subscriber database analyzer (204), a queue directory (206), and a message queue agent (208). The subscriber database analyzer performs a comparison between data that the user has provided and the message content. The subscriber database causes the message queue agent to forward the message to a user-defined telecommunications address based upon the message content and the results of the comparison.