| 摘要 |
An enhanced mail server to transform electronic mail messages according to a set of rules controlled by the server's administrators. The server appends, embeds, or links promotional, informational, and organizational information to outgoing and incoming electronic mail messages, and reformat the mail messages into HTML form. Checks are provided to insure that electronic mail senders consent to the attachment of information at the enhanced mail server. A billing process is also provided for billing the entity providing the information being attached. The information to be attached, embedded, or linked may be one or more commercial, small business, corporate, special interest, or targeted advertisements, one or more personal, group, appointment, or event calendars, one or more organizational messages, one or more family photos, or any other information considered appropriate by the server's owners and administrators. To select the appropriate information to send with a particular message, a lookup table, database, or rule base is used to associate elements of the message with a specific set of items of information and a specific set of actions to be taken to transform the message. The message's From address, To address, Reply-To address, some combination of these three, and any other element or part of element in the message form a composite key or set of conditions to perform a series of lookups in the table, database, or rule base. On retrieval of records from the database, or upon application of rules from the rule base, the message is transformed according to the rules for which the message conditions apply.
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