Patents by Inventor Nathan D. Howell

Nathan D. Howell has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Patent number: 12008017
    Abstract: This disclosure describes methods, non-transitory computer readable storage media, and systems that utilize a plurality of data validation processes to merge or replicate data across databases for downstream operations. For example, in response to a request to merge data from one or more source servers to one or more destination servers, a disclosed system determines database events to merge based on a plurality of database tables accessed in connection with a card account transaction. The disclosed system validates subsets of database events for the accessed database tables based on the quantities and event identifier sequencing of the database events. Additionally, the disclosed system replicates the database events from the source servers to the destination servers in response to validating the completeness and ordering of the database events for the card account transaction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 19, 2022
    Date of Patent: June 11, 2024
    Assignee: Marqeta, Inc.
    Inventors: Abhishek Hodavdekar, Eric A. Pinkham, Jeffrey Jow, Nathan D. Howell
  • Publication number: 20240061862
    Abstract: This disclosure describes methods, non-transitory computer readable storage media, and systems that utilize a plurality of data validation processes to merge or replicate data across databases for downstream operations. For example, in response to a request to merge data from one or more source servers to one or more destination servers, a disclosed system determines database events to merge based on a plurality of database tables accessed in connection with a card account transaction. The disclosed system validates subsets of database events for the accessed database tables based on the quantities and event identifier sequencing of the database events.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 19, 2022
    Publication date: February 22, 2024
    Inventors: Abhishek Hodavdekar, Eric A. Pinkham, Jeffrey Jow, Nathan D. Howell
  • Patent number: 11768855
    Abstract: This disclosure describes methods, non-transitory computer readable storage media, and systems that utilize a plurality of data validation processes to merge or replicate data across databases for downstream operations. For example, in response to a request to merge data from one or more source servers to one or more destination servers, a disclosed system determines database events to merge based on a plurality of database tables accessed in connection with a card account transaction. The disclosed system validates subsets of database events for the accessed database tables based on the quantities and event identifier sequencing of the database events. Additionally, the disclosed system replicates the database events from the source servers to the destination servers in response to validating the completeness and ordering of the database events for the card account transaction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 29, 2022
    Date of Patent: September 26, 2023
    Assignee: Marqeta, Inc.
    Inventors: Abhishek Hodavdekar, Eric A. Pinkham, Jeffrey Jow, Nathan D. Howell
  • Patent number: 9305079
    Abstract: The subject invention provides for an advanced and robust system and method that facilitates detecting spam. The system and method include components as well as other operations which enhance or promote finding characteristics that are difficult for the spammer to avoid and finding characteristics in non-spam that are difficult for spammers to duplicate. Exemplary characteristics include analyzing character and/or number sequences, strings, and sub-strings, detecting various entropy levels of one or more character sequences, strings and/or sub-strings and analyzing message headers.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 1, 2013
    Date of Patent: April 5, 2016
    Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC
    Inventors: Bryan T. Starbuck, Robert L. Rounthwaite, David E. Heckerman, Joshua T. Goodman, Eliot C. Gillum, Nathan D Howell, Kenneth R. Aldinger
  • Publication number: 20130318116
    Abstract: The subject invention provides for an advanced and robust system and method that facilitates detecting spam. The system and method include components as well as other operations which enhance or promote finding characteristics that are difficult for the spammer to avoid and finding characteristics in non-spam that are difficult for spammers to duplicate. Exemplary characteristics include examining origination features in pairs, analyzing character and/or number sequences, strings, and sub-strings, detecting various entropy levels of one or more character sequences, strings and/or sub-strings as well as analyzing message and/or feature sizes.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 1, 2013
    Publication date: November 28, 2013
    Applicant: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Bryan T. Starbuck, Robert L. Rounthwaite, David E. Heckerman, Joshua T. Goodman, Eliot C. Gillum, Nathan D. Howell, Kenneth R. Aldinger
  • Patent number: 8533270
    Abstract: The subject invention provides for an advanced and robust system and method that facilitates detecting spam. The system and method include components as well as other operations which enhance or promote finding characteristics that are difficult or the spammer to avoid and finding characteristics in non-spam that are difficult for spammers to duplicate. Exemplary characteristics include examining origination features in pairs, analyzing character and/or number sequences, strings, and sub-strings, detecting various entropy levels of one or more character sequences, strings and/or sub-strings as well as analyzing message and/or feature sizes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 23, 2003
    Date of Patent: September 10, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Bryan T. Starbuck, Robert L. Rounthwaite, David E. Heckerman, Joshua T. Goodman, Eliot C. Gillum, Nathan D. Howell, Kenneth R. Aldinger
  • Patent number: 8214438
    Abstract: The present invention involves a system and method that facilitate extracting data from messages for spam filtering. The extracted data can be in the form of features, which can be employed in connection with machine learning systems to build improved filters. Data associated with the subject line, timestamps, and the message body can be extracted and employed to generate one or more features. In particular, subject lines and message bodies can be examined for consecutive, repeating characters, blobs, the association or distance between such characters, blobs and non-blob portions of the message. The values or counts obtained can be broken down into one or more ranges corresponding to a degree of spaminess. Presence and type of attachments to messages, percentage of non-white-space and non-numeric characters of a message, and determining message delivery times can be used to identify spam. A time-based delta can be computed to facilitate determining the delivery time.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 1, 2004
    Date of Patent: July 3, 2012
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: John D. Mehr, Nathan D. Howell, Micah C. Rupersburg
  • Patent number: 7665131
    Abstract: The present invention involves a system and method that facilitate extracting data from messages for spam filtering. The extracted data can be in the form of features, which can be employed in connection with machine learning systems to build improved filters. Data associated with origination information as well as other information embedded in the body of the message that allows a recipient of the message to contact and/or respond to the sender of the message can be extracted as features. The features, or a subset thereof, can be normalized and/or deobfuscated prior to being employed as features of the machine learning systems. The (deobfuscated) features can be employed to populate a plurality of feature lists that facilitate spam detection and prevention. Exemplary features include an email address, an IP address, a URL, an embedded image pointing to a URL, and/or portions thereof.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: January 9, 2007
    Date of Patent: February 16, 2010
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Joshua T. Goodman, Robert L. Rounthwaite, Daniel Gwozdz, John D. Mehr, Nathan D. Howell, Micah C. Rupersburg, Bryan T. Starbuck
  • Patent number: 7610344
    Abstract: Techniques are presented for assigning reputations to email senders. In one implementation, real-time statistics and heuristics are constructed, stored, analyzed, and used to formulate a sender reputation level for use in evaluating and controlling a given sender's connection to an message transfer agent or email recipient. A sender with an unfavorable reputation may be denied a connection before resources are spent receiving and processing email messages from the sender. A sender with a favorable reputation may be rewarded by having safeguards removed from the connection, which also saves system resources. The statistics and heuristics may include real-time analysis of traffic patterns and delivery characteristics used by an email sender, analysis of content, and historical or time-sliced views of all of the above.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 13, 2004
    Date of Patent: October 27, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: John D. Mehr, Nathan D Howell, Paul S Rehfuss
  • Patent number: 7558832
    Abstract: The subject invention provides for a feedback loop system and method that facilitate classifying items in connection with spam prevention in server and/or client-based architectures. The invention makes uses of a machine-learning approach as applied to spam filters, and in particular, randomly samples incoming email messages so that examples of both legitimate and junk/spam mail are obtained to generate sets of training data. Users which are identified as spam-fighters are asked to vote on whether a selection of their incoming email messages is individually either legitimate mail or junk mail. A database stores the properties for each mail and voting transaction such as user information, message properties and content summary, and polling results for each message to generate training data for machine learning systems. The machine learning systems facilitate creating improved spam filter(s) that are trained to recognize both legitimate mail and spam mail and to distinguish between them.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 2, 2007
    Date of Patent: July 7, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Robert L. Rounthwaite, Joshua T. Goodman, David E. Heckerman, John D. Mehr, Nathan D. Howell, Micah C. Rupersburg, Dean A. Slawson
  • Patent number: 7543076
    Abstract: Message header spam filtering is described. In an embodiment, a message is received that includes header entries arranged in an ordered sequence which indicates a path by which the message was communicated. The header entries are parsed to categorize each header entry as a header type where the header types are listed in the ordered sequence. A quantity of each different header type is determined, and a determination is made as to whether the message is likely a spam message based at least in part on the quantity corresponding to a particular header type. In another embodiment, a numeric representation of the ordered sequence is created where the numeric representation includes unique integers assigned to each different header type. A determination is made as to whether the message is likely a spam message based at least in part on the numeric representation of the ordered sequence of header types.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 5, 2005
    Date of Patent: June 2, 2009
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: John D. Mehr, Nathan D. Howell
  • Patent number: 7272853
    Abstract: The present invention involves a system and method that facilitate extracting data from messages for spam filtering. The extracted data can be in the form of features, which can be employed in connection with machine learning systems to build improved filters. Data associated with origination information as well as other information embedded in the body of the message that allows a recipient of the message to contact and/or respond to the sender of the message call be extracted as features. The features, or a subset thereof, can be normalized and/or deobfuscated prior to being employed as features of the machine learning systems. The (deobfuscated) features can be employed to populate a plurality of feature lists that facilitate spam detection and prevention. Exemplary features include an email address, an IP address, a URL, an embedded image pointing to a URL, and/or portions thereof.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 4, 2003
    Date of Patent: September 18, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Joshua T. Goodman, Robert L. Rounthwaite, Daniel Gwozdz, John D. Mehr, Nathan D. Howell, Micah C. Rupersburg, Bryan T. Starbuck
  • Patent number: 7219148
    Abstract: The subject invention provides for a feedback loop system and method that facilitate classifying items in connection with spam prevention in server and/or client-based architectures. The invention makes uses of a machine-learning approach as applied to spam filters, and in particular, randomly samples incoming email messages so that examples of both legitimate and junk/spam mail are obtained to generate sets of training data. Users which are identified as spam-fighters are asked to vote on whether a selection of their incoming email messages is individually either legitimate mail or junk mail. A database stores the properties for each mail and voting transaction such as user information, message properties and content summary, and polling results for each message to generate training data for machine learning systems. The machine learning systems facilitate creating improved spam filter(s) that are trained to recognize both legitimate mail and spam mail and to distinguish between them.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 3, 2003
    Date of Patent: May 15, 2007
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Robert L. Rounthwaite, Joshua T. Goodman, David E. Heckerman, John D. Mehr, Nathan D. Howell, Micah C. Rupersburg, Dean A. Slawson
  • Publication number: 20040260776
    Abstract: The subject invention provides for an advanced and robust system and method that facilitates detecting spam. The system and method include components as well as other operations which enhance or promote finding characteristics that are difficult or the spammer to avoid and finding characteristics in non-spam that are difficult for spammers to duplicate. Exemplary characteristics include examining origination features in pairs analyzing character and/or number sequences, strings, and sub-strings, detecting various entropy levels of one or more character sequences, strings and/or sub-strings as well as analyzing message and/or feature sizes.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 23, 2003
    Publication date: December 23, 2004
    Inventors: Bryan T. Starbuck, Robert L. Rounthwaite, David E. Heckerman, Joshua T. Goodman, Eliot C. Gillum, Nathan D. Howell, Kenneth R. Aldinger
  • Publication number: 20040177110
    Abstract: The subject invention provides for a feedback loop system and method that facilitate classifying items in connection with spam prevention in server and/or client-based architectures. The invention makes uses of a machine-learning approach as applied to spam filters, and in particular, randomly samples incoming email messages so that examples of both legitimate and junk/spam mail are obtained to generate sets of training data. Users which are identified as spam-fighters are asked to vote on whether a selection of their incoming email messages is individually either legitimate mail or junk mail. A database stores the properties for each mail and voting transaction such as user information, message properties and content summary, and polling results for each message to generate training data for machine learning systems. The machine learning systems facilitate creating improved spam filter(s) that are trained to recognize both legitimate mail and spam mail and to distinguish between them.
    Type: Application
    Filed: March 3, 2003
    Publication date: September 9, 2004
    Inventors: Robert L. Rounthwaite, Joshua T. Goodman, David E. Heckerman, John D. Mehr, Nathan D. Howell, Micah C. Rupersburg, Dean A. Slawson