Email Recognition via Outgoing Message Fragment Fingerprinting
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing email detection systems require regular maintenance and are configured to minimize false positives, leading to reduced sensitivity and the persistence of undesired email despite multi-method detection approaches.
Innovation Solution
A method and system that identifies incoming emails as desired by fragmenting email messages, creating representations of these fragments, and comparing them to stored representations of outgoing emails, allowing desired emails to bypass stringent detection processes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If multi-method detection systems are used to detect undesired email, then detection capability is improved, but system complexity and maintenance requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of trying to identify undesired email through multiple complex detection methods, the patent inverts the approach by identifying desired email through a single fingerprinting method. Incoming emails are compared against stored fingerprints of known desired emails, and those that match are automatically recognized as desired, bypassing the need for complex multi-method detection systems.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the core identification feature (fingerprint) from desired emails and uses it as a standalone identification mechanism. By taking out the essential characteristic of desired emails and using it for direct comparison, the system avoids the complexity of implementing and maintaining multiple detection methods while still achieving reliable identification.
2Reliability
If detection systems are configured to minimize false positives, then false positive rate is reduced, but sensitivity to detect undesired email decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent inverts the traditional detection approach by instead of asking 'is this email undesired?' (which requires high sensitivity and risks false positives), it asks 'is this email desired?' through fingerprint matching. This inversion allows for high confidence in positive identifications without the same false positive problems, as the fingerprint matching provides direct evidence of desired email origin.
Data Source
AI summary
A system and method for recognizing an incoming email as a desired email examines outgoing email messages to arrange the email into fragments for which representations are created and stored. When an incoming message is received, the message is arranged into fragments for which representations are created. The representations of the incoming message are compared to the stored representations and if the matches between stored representations and the representations of the incoming message meet a predefined threshold test, the incoming message is recognized as being desirable. An incoming email message which has been recognized as being desirable can be subjected to a lesser examination to recognize a SPAM message, or to no further examination to recognize a SPAM message.