The Internet has provided new opportunities for people to interact with strangers. These interactions can often be fun, informative, and even profitable. However, they may also involve risks. For example, just how reliable is the advice located on the Internet from a self-proclaimed expert? Can one really trust that a given business on the Internet will provide the product as described? Is this product, movie, or hotel, something of value? Can the author's opinion be trusted? Is it reliable?
Before the Internet, such questions could be answered through a reputation of the other party, often obtained from more trusted friends, family, co-workers, or the like. Businesses, experts, and so forth may also have provided input on whether such opinions could be trusted. Others, such as the Better Business Bureau, and the like, provided information about personal experiences, complaints, and other gossip about which business or expert one could rely upon, and whether this is a product that may be of actual value. However, seeking out such sources for their opinions on a particular article, product, or the like, often may take a significant amount of time. Moreover, a person might want to seek opinions from several sources, to cross check, and better weigh the opinions obtained. Again, this may take a significant amount of time and resources to obtain reasonable opinions. It becomes more difficult, where the searcher may not be familiar with sources that can evaluate and provide an opinion on a particular subject, let alone, finding a person that might be able to provide an opinion about how reliable another person's comments might be. Thus, there is a desire to quickly determine a reputation of a person, product, article, or the like.
The issue of obtaining opinions about internet material becomes even more complex when one considers massive mailings, such as might occur during sending of notices or advertisements by a legitimate business, church, or the like, versus mailings that might be spam. Thus, there is a desire to quickly determine whether the mailings are reputable; whether an author of content is reputable; whether the content; whether a product, and/or a service is reputable; and to take action to block the less reputable content, product, service, author, and/or even a source of the reputation event. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds