Abstract: The present invention is answering agent accessible at an e-mail destination address. The answering agent waits for e-mail messages to be delivered that have a “To:” header and a “Subject:” header. The “To:” header is filled-in by a user and has two halves, a topic half and a domain name half in the form of “topic@domain-name”. The answering agent logically resides at the corresponding domain-name address on a network, e.g., the Internet. It extracts the source addresses of e-mail messages it receives so that it knows where to return answers and where a database of preferences might be indexed locally. The topic refers to an area of information that the user has a question about. The “Subject:” header is filled-in by the user with a qualifier that helps narrow down the breadth of the user's inquiry. A finite set of topical areas are accessible to the user through the answering agent.

Abstract: An e-mail access gateway system is provided. The email access gateway system includes an authorization system that receives an e-mail message and determines whether a reply to the e-mail message is authorized. A reply system coupled to the authorization system receives the e-mail message and generates a response message if the e-mail message is authorized.