Certification of embedded content in e-mail is provided. A sender wishing
to have code certified for inclusion in e-mail sends the code to a token
authority. A code verification engine acting automatically or in
conjunction with an analyst examines the code to determine whether it
poses a risk of harm to e-mail recipients. If not, the token authority
issues a certificate for the embedded content. The mail sender sends
e-mail to recipients including the embedded content, and the
certification is sent in conjunction with the content itself. A mailbox
provider inspects the received e-mail to determine whether it includes
embedded content and, if so, whether a certification is attached that the
embedded content is not harmful. If not, or if the message includes
uncertified content in addition to certified content, then the message is
rejected, or delivered with a warning that certification is not present.