Nathan A Howell

US Patent:

7543076, Jun 2, 2009

Filed:

Jul 5, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/174843

Inventors:

John D. Mehr - Seattle WA, US
Nathan D. Howell - Seattle WA, US

Assignee:

Microsoft Corporation - Redmond WA

International Classification:

G06F 15/173

US Classification:

709238, 709206, 709207, 709235

Abstract:

Message header spam filtering is described. In an embodiment, a message is received that includes header entries arranged in an ordered sequence which indicates a path by which the message was communicated. The header entries are parsed to categorize each header entry as a header type where the header types are listed in the ordered sequence. A quantity of each different header type is determined, and a determination is made as to whether the message is likely a spam message based at least in part on the quantity corresponding to a particular header type. In another embodiment, a numeric representation of the ordered sequence is created where the numeric representation includes unique integers assigned to each different header type. A determination is made as to whether the message is likely a spam message based at least in part on the numeric representation of the ordered sequence of header types.

US Patent:

7610344, Oct 27, 2009

Filed:

Dec 13, 2004

Appl. No.:

11/011462

Inventors:

John D. Mehr - Seattle WA, US
Nathan D Howell - Seattle WA, US
Paul S Rehfuss - Seattle WA, US

Assignee:

Microsoft Corporation - Redmond WA

International Classification:

G06F 15/16

US Classification:

709206, 709207, 709202, 706 16, 707 10, 715205

Abstract:

Techniques are presented for assigning reputations to email senders. In one implementation, real-time statistics and heuristics are constructed, stored, analyzed, and used to formulate a sender reputation level for use in evaluating and controlling a given sender's connection to an message transfer agent or email recipient. A sender with an unfavorable reputation may be denied a connection before resources are spent receiving and processing email messages from the sender. A sender with a favorable reputation may be rewarded by having safeguards removed from the connection, which also saves system resources. The statistics and heuristics may include real-time analysis of traffic patterns and delivery characteristics used by an email sender, analysis of content, and historical or time-sliced views of all of the above.

US Patent:

8214438, Jul 3, 2012

Filed:

Mar 1, 2004

Appl. No.:

10/790574

Inventors:

John D. Mehr - Seattle WA, US
Nathan D. Howell - Seattle WA, US
Micah C. Rupersburg - Seattle WA, US

Assignee:

Microsoft Corporation - Redmond WA

International Classification:

G06F 15/16

US Classification:

709206

Abstract:

The present invention involves a system and method that facilitate extracting data from messages for spam filtering. The extracted data can be in the form of features, which can be employed in connection with machine learning systems to build improved filters. Data associated with the subject line, timestamps, and the message body can be extracted and employed to generate one or more features. In particular, subject lines and message bodies can be examined for consecutive, repeating characters, blobs, the association or distance between such characters, blobs and non-blob portions of the message. The values or counts obtained can be broken down into one or more ranges corresponding to a degree of spaminess. Presence and type of attachments to messages, percentage of non-white-space and non-numeric characters of a message, and determining message delivery times can be used to identify spam. A time-based delta can be computed to facilitate determining the delivery time.

US Patent:

8208375, Jun 26, 2012

Filed:

Mar 17, 2008

Appl. No.:

12/050162

Inventors:

Manjunath Bharadwaj - Bellevue WA, US
Nathan Howell - Seattle WA, US
Wei Jiang - Redmond WA, US

Assignee:

Microsoft Corporation - Redmond WA

International Classification:

G06F 11/00

US Classification:

370230, 3703953

Abstract:

Several approaches to selectively filtering network traffic are described. One approach involves a system for selectively filtering network traffic. The system includes a helper application, which is coupled to a networking program, and is used to identify a user-initiated request. A network filter driver is coupled to the networking program, for intercepting the user-initiated request. A filtering service is coupled to both the helper application and the network filter driver, and is used to determine if the user-initiated request is allowable. If the request is allowable, the filtering service is configured to generate a special identifier, which the helper application is configured to include in a subsequent request. The filtering service is configured to allow a subsequent request which includes the special identifier, and the network filter driver's configured to strip a special identifier from subsequent requests.

US Patent:

20060277259, Dec 7, 2006

Filed:

Jun 7, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/146502

Inventors:

Elissa Murphy - Seattle WA, US
John Mehr - Seattle WA, US
Nathan Howell - Seattle WA, US
Paul Rehfuss - Seattle WA, US

Assignee:

Microsoft Corporation - Redmond WA

International Classification:

G06F 15/16

US Classification:

709206000

Abstract:

Distributed sender reputations are described. In an implementation, a method includes evaluating multiple characteristics of message delivery to establish a reputation for a sender of the message by a mail transfer agent and sharing data which describes the evaluation with another mail transfer agent.

US Patent:

20070061402, Mar 15, 2007

Filed:

Sep 15, 2005

Appl. No.:

11/228032

Inventors:

John Mehr - Seattle WA, US
Nathan Howell - Seattle WA, US

Assignee:

Microsoft Corporation - Redmond WA

International Classification:

G06F 15/16

US Classification:

709206000

Abstract:

Techniques that are employable to perform multipurpose internet mail extension (MIME) analysis are presented herein.