Spam Blocking via Usage Identity Thresholds in Clipping Services

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Solution Overview

Problem

Spam messages, including unsolicited commercial and malicious content, pose a significant challenge for communication technologies like SMS and instant messaging, especially affecting mobile devices by exhausting resources and incurring direct costs for users, and clipping services are vulnerable to spam exploitation.

Innovation Solution

A method and apparatus for tracking and blocking content forwarding requests over a network by associating usage identities (source, content, and destination) with thresholds, allowing or blocking content forwarding based on these identities and thresholds, thereby identifying and preventing spam messages.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If clipping services are made generally available to network users, then content sharing capability is improved, but vulnerability to spam exploitation increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvecontent sharing capabilityVSAvoidspam exploitation risk

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSObject-affected harmful factors

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces a network server as an intermediary between the clipping service and remote devices. This intermediary monitors content forwarding requests, tracks usage patterns, and filters out spam before it reaches the network, thereby enabling general availability of clipping services while protecting against spam exploitation

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements feedback mechanisms by monitoring and tracking content forwarding requests through the network server. Usage data is collected and analyzed to identify spam patterns, allowing the system to dynamically adjust filtering rules and block abusive behavior while maintaining legitimate content sharing

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

2Object-affected harmful factors

If spam blocking mechanisms are implemented, then spam prevention is improved, but complexity of the messaging system increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvespam preventionVSAvoidmessaging system complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The spam blocking functionality is extracted from individual messaging devices and centralized on the network server. This allows spam prevention to be implemented without increasing device complexity, as the filtering logic resides in the network infrastructure rather than in each user's mobile device or messaging application

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Data Source

PatentUS7706263B2Tracking and blocking of spam directed to clipping services

Publication Date: 2010.04.27 YAHOO ASSETS LLC

AI summary

A method and apparatus tracks and blocks content requested by a first remote device for forwarding over a network to a second remote device. For a given content item, one or more usage identities are tracked. Usage identities may include any combination of one or more of a source identity, a content identity, and/or a destination identity. One or more thresholds associated with the tracked usage identities are applied to determine whether a request to forward content should be blocked; a threshold is a limit on the number of times a content item having a particular usage identity may be forwarded within a time period. Misuse of content-forwarding messaging services by spammers and the like may thereby be discouraged. In one embodiment, the invention may be employed as part of a content clipping service for forwarding content to mobile devices by way of SMS or another mobile messaging technology.