LIMITING INTERACTION BETWEEN PARTIES IN A NETWORKED SESSION

Interaction between participants in an online session is controlled by using filters. Each participant in an online session may have lists of other users with whom the participant wants to limit interaction in an online session. Each list is hashed to create a filter for the participant. For blocking, the host of an online session logically ORs the filters of all the participants in a session to create a session filter. An identifier for each of the current participants in an online session is hashed to create a user filter. A host of an online session checks the session filter to determine if a prospective participant is blocked. If not, the user filter is transmitted to the prospective participant to check against a block filter. Mute filters and ghost filters are handled similarly, but limit the interaction of participants in an online session in a different fashion.