View article

Techniques for reducing the amount of junk e-mail received by a user of an e-mail system. A recipient description containing non~ address information is added to an e~ mail message. The user has an e-mail? lter which has access to information which provides a model of the user. The e-mail? lter uses the non-address information and the model infor mation to determine whether the e~ mail message should be provided to the user. The email? lter further has access to information which provides models of the user’s correspon dents. If the? lter does not provide the message to the user, it uses the non-address information and the model informa tion of the user’s correspondents to determine who the message might be forwarded to. A sender of e~ mail can also use the model information of the sender’s correspondents together with the non-address information to determine who the message should be sent to. The …