Processing and forwarding messages from a computer network to a forwarding service

A message processing and forwarding system for processing electronic messages in a digital format received over a computer communication path or network, and forwarded over a telephone circuit switched network to a user's receiver, such as a pager. A content processor in a message server processes the received digital message in accordance with knowledge of the receiver's capabilities and user-configured message filtering information to create a customized second message suitable for handling by the user's receiver at a remote physical location. Also, the system defines a distributed architecture for global paging, including multiple redundancy, to yield a robust system. In a preferred embodiment, the original digital message is part of an e-mail message received and forwarded through a conventional computer communication network such as the Internet.