DYNAMIC MESSAGE-MAILBOX SIZE VARIATION

A messaging system (100) automatically correctly resizes users' mailboxes (160-161) based on information gathered through periodic activity audits (206). The gathered information includes frequency of login to the messaging system and time of last login for each login ID and the fill level and fill-level frequency for each mailbox. Periodicity of audits, time-to-login-ID-expiration period, upper and lower fill-level thresholds, time-to-storage-allotment-change period, and allotment-change size and mailbox size limits are administratively set (202-204). If audit reports indicate that a login ID has not been used for the time-to-login-ID-expiration period, the user is warned and if the user does not respond, the login is expired (208-224). If audit reports indicate that one of the thresholds has been exceeded without the other threshold also having been exceeded for the time-to-storage-allotment-change period, the mailbox size is incremented or decremented by the allotment-change size, either immediately or upon approval by the mailbox user, within the mailbox size limits (210-258). A user can also request to have the user's mailbox incremented (260).