Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Micosoft Corporation

Malcolm Hollis Davis

Douglas John Hines

Wei Jiang

Ivan Osipkov

Eliot Carleton Gillum

Krishna C Vitaldevara

Jason D Walter

Joshua Korb

Peter David Waxman

Roy Williams

Mehrdad Bidgoli

Robert L McCann

Milenko Drinic

John Gerard Speare

Geoffrey John Hulten

Mihai Costea

Vasantha K Vemula

Paul M Midgen

Michael James Ahiakpor

Aravind K Ramachandran

Samuel J L Albert

Ramarathnam R Venkatesan

Marcus Peinado

Jason Matthew Cahill

Marco A Demello

Karim Batthish

Ryan Charles Colvin

David R Fulmer

Kristian L M Andaker

Chad W Mills

John Leslie Gibbon

Christopher Frederick Graham

Jean Wu

Robert Lee Mccann

Joshua David Korb

Message management and classification techniques are described. In one or more implementations, a message received from a sender for delivery via a user account is examined to extract one or more features of the message. A determination is then made as to whether the message corresponds to one or more categories based on the extracted features, the categories usable to enable features to be applied to the message in a user interface.

Message classification and management

One or more techniques and/or systems are provided for defining a message behavior profile for a sender, which may be used to categorize messages from the sender. A message behavior profile may be defined based upon, for example, message distribution behavior of the sender (e.g., volume, frequency, variance in content amongst messages sent to recipients, etc.); recipient interactions with messages from the sender (e.g., message read rates, message response rates, etc.); unsubscription options comprised within messages from the sender; and/or other factors. In this way, the message behavior profile and/or features extracted from a message may be used to categorize a message from the sender (e.g., newsletter, commercial advertisements, alert, social network etc.). Categorized messages may be organized into folders, displayed or hidden within views, and/or processed based upon their respective categorizations.

Message categorization

The filtering of activities generated by nodes of a network while interacting with a device may be performed by evaluating the desirability of the activities (e.g., a spam or not-spam determination of email messages sent by the node) and assigning a trust rating to the node. However, nodes are often identified by network address, and an operator of a node sending undesirable activities may reassign the network address of the node in order to avoid heavy filtering. Instead, nodes may be identified as being controlled by a network entity (e.g., an autonomous system identified in a border gateway protocol routing table.) The network entity is assigned a network entity trust rating based on the trust ratings of the nodes controlled thereby, and an appropriate level of activity filtering based on the network entity trust rating may be selected for subsequent activities received from all nodes controlled by the network entity.

Activity filtering based on trust ratings of network

A system and method of managing unsolicited email sent to an email system over a network. Email messages are received at an message at an inbound mail transfer agent. A determination is made as to whether the email message is suspected to be an unsolicited suspect message. One or more queries for additional information on one or more characteristics of the message is initiated. Determinations are made based on replies to the queries before issuing a message accepted for delivery indication to a sending server.

Real-time spam look-up system

Network entities controlling a set of nodes may vary by trustworthiness, such as tolerance for nodes that send spam, distribute malware, or perform denial-of-service attacks. A device receiving such activities may identify a trust rating of the network entity and apply appropriately stringent filtering (such as spam evaluation) to activities received from nodes controlled by the network entity. However, a poor trust rating of a network entity may subject a legitimate node controlled by the network entity to inefficiently or unfairly stringent activity filtering. Instead, the device may evaluate the activities of a particular node, assign a trust rating to the node, and if the trust rating of the node is higher than the trust rating of the network entity, apply less stringent activity filtering to the activities of the node, thereby 'rescuing' the node from the more stringent activity filtering applied to the other nodes of the network entity.

Rescuing trusted nodes from filtering of untrusted network entities

A new ((n)th) black box is produced for a digital rights management (DRM) system. The (n)th black box is for being installed in and for performing decryption and encryption functions in the DRM system. The (n)th black box is produced and delivered to the DRM system upon request and includes a new ((n)th) executable and a new ((n)th) key file. The (n)th key file has a new ((n)th) set of black box keys and a number of old sets of black box keys. The request includes an old ((n&#x2212;1)th) key file having the old sets of black box keys. A code optimizer/randomizer receives a master executable and randomized optimization parameters as inputs and produces the (n)th executable as an output. A key manager receives the (n&#x2212;1)th key file and the (n)th set of black box keys as inputs, extracts the old sets of black box keys from the (n&#x2212;1)th key file, and produces the (n)th key file including the (n)th set of black box keys and the old sets of black box keys as an output. The (n)th executable and the (n)th key file are forwarded to the requesting DRM system.

Producing a new black box for a digital rights management (DRM) system

Encrypted email message structures can contain recipient information that can reveal, to any recipient, all of the other recipients of an email message. Because some recipients, such as recipients to whom the message was 'blind carbon-copied', should remain hidden from the other recipients, individual encrypted messages can be created. One encrypted message can be created for all of the recipients who are intended to be revealed, such as the recipients listed in the TO and CC fields of an email header. A second encrypted message can be created for all of the recipients of the message who are intended to be hidden, such as the recipient listed in the BCC field of an email header. Alternatively, multiple encrypted messages can be created individually for each recipient in the BCC field, if the BCC recipients are to be hidden even from other BCC recipients.

Encryption to BCC recipients with S/MIME

The present invention provides the ability to compare and enforce policies between trusted entities within a rights management system. For example, policies between the two entities may be received by either entity. They may then be compared to determine the compatibility of the two policies. If compatible, or maybe even without the comparison, other embodiments provide for message server use license, which allows access to the protected portion of a message, thereby permitting an entity to enforce its message policies.

Rights management inter-entity message policies and enforcement

The present invention allows for a pre-licensing process for content that is subject to rights management in order to allow a principal access to the content when the principal does not have access to the rights management server. Rather than requiring the principal to submit a rights account certificate and request for a use license to the rights management server, the present invention allows the message server to obtain a use license on behalf of the principal. Accordingly, the principal can access the use license from the message server and decrypt protected content without having to request the use license from the rights management server.

Pre-licensing of rights management protected content

A recipient computer system submits an anonymous electronic message address to a source computing system for use when the source computing system is to send electronic messages to the recipient. When the electronic message server receives an electronic message, it reads the electronic message address and determines that the address corresponds to the recipient, but only if the electronic message originated from the source. If the electronic message were to originate from a different source computing system, the same electronic message address would not be respected for delivery to the recipient. Accordingly, the electronic message address is specific to a source, and thus sharing the electronic message address has little avail. The association between the address and the recipient may be revoked when the recipient no longer desires to receive messages from the source.

Source-specific electronic message addressing

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Kirkland, WA, United States of America

Malcolm Hollis Davis