Electronic Message Aggregation and Sharing System and Apparatus

摘要

In one aspect of the invention, an improved messaging service is described comprising a server for receiving messages from a first subscriber addressed to one or more second subscribers and storing them in a scrambled form on the server along with security tokens specific to each message and recipient subscriber to facilitate unscrambling only by the intended recipient subscribers.;In a second aspect of the invention, a subscriber terminal is described for precalculating security tokens corresponding to each of a number of yet-to-be received messages and transmitting the security tokens to a server for scrambling said messages even when the receiving subscriber terminal is offline.;A new-message originating terminal also receives from the server a precalculated and prestored security token for each of a number of intended recipients of the new message and combines them with a locally generated security token to form header information included with the new message.

主权项

1. An improved multi-media messaging device for providing a service to registered subscribers for transmitting messages to or receiving messages from other registered or unregistered users, comprising:—
A server connected to the Internet for providing access to said messaging service by computing terminals of said registered subscribers; A storage memory connected to said server for storing a number of messages received for each subscriber; Software running on said server for initially registering new subscribers and for receiving from each subscriber a number of precalculated security tokens from the corresponding subscriber's computing terminal for use in scrambling a corresponding one of said number of messages addressed to the subscriber prior to storage in said storage memory and also for receiving from each subscriber if desired login credentials for any of the subscriber's existing messaging services, including voicemail services provided by different, unrelated telephonic service providers. Further software running on said server to receive requests from the computing terminals of already registered subscribers to communicate data for displaying a list of messages received and for communicating the messages and for transmitting the requested data or messages.