Maintaining the integrity of email authorship

Abstract

Maintaining the integrity of email authorship including receiving, by a receiving email client, an email message containing content created by a sender; identifying, in dependence upon the email message, an edit authority value; receiving, from a recipient of the email message, an instruction to forward the received email message; receiving, from the recipient, an instruction to edit the content contained in the received email message; and determining, in dependence upon the edit authority value, whether to allow the recipient to edit the content; if the recipient is allowed to edit the content, determining, in dependence upon the edit authority value, whether to enforce edit tracking in the content; and forwarding the email message with the recipient's edits tracked if edit tracking is enforced; or forwarding the email message with the recipient's edits untracked if edit tracking is not enforced.