receiving electronic messages from senders over a communication channel, determining a sender identifier for each of the electronic messages, and storing the sender identifiers in an electronic memory;

storing a plurality of thresholds in the electronic memory, each of the plurality of thresholds being associated with a particular sender identifier from the sender identifiers;

determining a channel load for the communication channel;

for each of a plurality of electronic messages subsequently received over the communication channel:

determining whether the channel load exceeds a threshold associated with a sender associated with each of the plurality of electronic messages;

when the channel load exceeds the threshold, processing a reduced amount of future messages from the sender associated with the electronic message; and

wherein hysteresis is used to halt the processing of the reduced amount of messages, wherein the hysteresis comprises waiting for a predetermined amount of time before halting the processing of the reduced amount of messages.