Degrees of separation for filtering communications

摘要

A sender's degrees of separation from a recipient may be used to aid in spam filtering or to otherwise handle a communication. The “degrees of separation” represent a metric used to quantify whether/how the recipient is linked to the sender through intermediary people or other entities. For example, a recipient may know a first user (first degree of separation) and the first user may know a second user (second degree of separation) who knows the sender of an e-mail. In this case, the sender is separated from the recipient by two degrees of separation (by two other contacts). A level of “trust” or “legitimacy” about a sender's communication can be inferred by looking at whether the sender is linked to an intended recipient. Typically, user contact lists (e.g., address book, buddy list, and/or white list) are evaluated to determine the number of degrees (or hops) are required to link or relate two users.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
receiving a communication from a sender, wherein the communication is directed to an intended recipient; accessing a contact list associated with the intended recipient, the contact list associated with the intended recipient identifying at least one user identifier; accessing a contact list associated with the at least one user identifier; determining, based on the contact list associated with the intended recipient and the contact list associated with the at least one user identifier, whether the sender and the intended recipient are linked by less than a threshold number of degrees of separation; and determining, using at least one processor, whether to filter the communication based on whether the sender and the intended recipient are linked by less than the threshold number of degrees of separation.