AUTOMATED E-MAIL SCREENING TO VERIFY RECIPIENTS OF AN OUTGOING E-MAIL MESSAGE

1 . A method comprising:

obtaining an e-mail message to be sent and an e-mail distribution list containing prospective recipients of the e-mail message;

identifying a subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent;

obtaining one or more user attributes for each prospective recipient;

referencing a set of predefined exclusions associating user attributes with subject matter types, to identify any prospective recipients from the e-mail distribution list that have a user attribute that the set of predefined exclusions associate with the subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent; and

sending the e-mail message to the e-mail distribution list except for the prospective recipients identified using the set of predefined exclusions.

2 . The method of claim 1 , wherein identifying the subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent comprises:

obtaining one or more example e-mail messages for each of the plurality of subject matter types;

parsing each example e-mail message into one or more keywords and associating the one or more keywords with the subject matter type; and

matching the content of the e-mail message to be sent to the keywords in the example e-mail messages to identify the associated subject matter types.

3 . The method of claim 2 , further comprising:

after parsing each example e-mail message into one or more keywords, eliminating any keywords common to more than one subject matter type from the association with subject matter types, so that each keyword is associated with only one of the plurality of subject matter types.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

looking up each prospective recipient in a user database and obtaining the one or more user attributes for each prospective recipient from the user database.

5 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

obtaining one or more keywords from the e-mail message to be sent and looking up the keywords in a subject matter database to identify the subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

the one or more user attributes comprise an admission status;

the identified subject matter type of the e-mail message is associated with admission status; and

one of the predefined exclusions excludes a prospective recipient with a particular value of admission status from receiving the e-mail message to be sent.

7 . A computer program product including computer usable program code embodied on a computer usable medium for screening an e-mail distribution list, the computer program product including:

computer usable program code for obtaining an e-mail message to be sent and an e-mail distribution list containing prospective recipients of the e-mail message;

computer usable program code for identifying a subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent;

computer usable program code for obtaining one or more user attributes for each prospective recipient;

computer usable program code defining a set of exclusions associating user attributes with subject matter types;

computer usable program code for referencing the set of exclusions to identify any prospective recipients from the e-mail distribution list that are excluded by the subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent; and

computer usable program code for sending the e-mail message to the e-mail distribution list except for the prospective recipients excluded by the subject matter type of the e-mail message.

8 . The computer program product of claim 7 , wherein the computer usable program code for identifying the subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent comprises:

computer usable program code for parsing each of a plurality of example e-mail messages into one or more keywords and associating the one or more keywords with the subject matter type; and

computer usable program code for matching the content of the e-mail message to be sent to the keywords in the example e-mail messages to identify the associated subject matter types.

9 . The computer program product of claim 8 , further comprising:

computer usable program code for eliminating any keywords common to more than one subject matter type so that each keyword is uniquely associated with only one of the plurality of subject matter types.

10 . The computer program product of claim 7 , further comprising:

computer usable program code defining a user database associating one or more user attributes with each of a plurality of users; and

computer usable program code for looking up each prospective recipient in the user database to obtain the one or more user attributes for each prospective recipient.

11 . The computer program product of claim 7 , further comprising:

computer usable program code defining a subject matter database associating one or more keywords with each of a plurality of keywords; and

computer usable program code for obtaining one or more keywords from the e-mail message to be sent and looking up the keywords in the subject matter database to identify the subject matter type of the e-mail message to be sent.

12 . The computer program product of claim 7 , further comprising:

the one or more user attributes comprise an admission status;

the identified subject matter type of the e-mail message is associated with admission status; and

one of the predefined exclusions excludes a prospective recipient with a particular value of admission status from receiving the e-mail message to be sent.