Method and system for handling unwanted email messages

摘要

A method, system, and computer program product for scanning incoming emails reduces the server resources needed, which improves server throughput and reduces costs. A method for processing incoming email messages comprised the steps of scanning incoming email messages to obtain an address of a sender of each incoming email message and to determine whether the email message is spam, for each email message that is determined to be spam, incrementing a count of email messages that are spam for a sender of the email message, determining that a count of email messages that are spam for a sender of an email message has exceeded a threshold, and thereafter, discarding all incoming email messages from the sender for which the count of email messages that are spam for a sender of an email message has exceeded a threshold without scanning the email messages to determine whether they are spam.

主权项

1. A method, comprising:
scanning, in response to a determination that a first time period has ended, email messages from an email address of a sender previously identified as a source of spam; placing the email address of the sender in a clean list such that scanning software is subsequently prevented from performing a full scan of additional messages from the email address of the sender, the placing performed in response to a determination that a count of the email messages that are clean has exceeded a threshold over a second time period, the second time period similar or less than the first time period; and placing the email address of the sender in a spammers list in response to a determination that a count of the email messages that are spam has exceeded a threshold over a third time period greater than the second time period, wherein the spammers list is replicated to another server.