Selby Hatch wrote:
2. Only senders that have a key to your mailbox can send
an email into your mailbox.
3. You will create one or more keys for your mailbox and
enter them into the email address book entries for the
persons you are giving the keys to.
The system you have described is very similar to ones that have
been described and implemented in the past. Personally, I agree with you
that this particular method of fighting spam is likely to form part of a
very effective anti-spam system. The most interesting feature of such a
system is that it has immediate benefit to someone who adopts it and it
can be adopted by individuals rather than requiring support from ISPs,
network maintainers, etc.
For some background on other similar proposals, check out:
A number of patents are relevant to this type of system:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=5930479
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6356935
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=6085321
The "Tagged Message Delivery Agent" which incorporates a similar system
of "tagged addresses" as one of its features:
http://www.tmda.net/
TMDA was inspired by Thomas Erskine's 1997 implementation of TMS
http://www.deepeddy.com/tms.html
A Forbes magazine article that suggests the use of passwords in subject
lines.
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2003/0623/136.html
See the "Virtual Private Email Addresses" implemented by TitanKey
http://www.titankey.com/
Hadmut Danisch's proposal for "Mail Cookies"
https://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/asrg/current/msg00054.
html
A variety of notes in the ASRG archives that I wrote starting with the
one below in March...
https://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/asrg/current/msg00041.
html
Note: It should be realized of course, that there is a long history of
passing passwords in the headers or body of email messages in order to
authenticate access to various resources -- folk were doing this long
before any of the systems above were patented or otherwise described.
bob wyman
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