DISTRIBUTED FREQUENCY DATA COLLECTION VIA INDICATOR EMBEDDED WITH DNS REQUEST

Domain Name Service (DNS) requests are used as the reporting vehicle for ensuring that security-related information can be transferred from a network. As one possibility, a central facility for a security provider may maintain a data collection capability that is based upon receiving the DNS requests containing the information being reported. In an email application, if a data block is embedded within or attached to an email message, an algorithm is applied to the data block to generate an indicator that is specifically related to the contents of the data block. As one possibility, the algorithm may generate a hash that provides a “digital fingerprint” having a reasonable likelihood that the hash is unique to the data block. By embedding the hash within a DNS request, the request becomes a report that the data block has been accessed.