Fighting the spam wars: A remailer approach with restrictive aliasing

ABSTRACT

We present an effective method of eliminating unsolicited electronic mail (so-called spam) and discuss its publicly accessible prototype implementation. A subscriber to our system is able to obtain an unlimited number of aliases of his/her permanent (protected) E-Mail address to be handed out to parties willing to communicate with the subscriber. It is also possible to set up publishable aliases, which can be used by human correspondents to contact the subscriber, while being useless to harvesting robots and spammers. The validity of an alias can be easily restricted to a specific duration in time, a specific number of received messages, a specific population of senders, and/or in other ways. The system is fully compatible with the existing E-Mail infrastructure and can be immediately accessed via any standard E-Mail client software (MUA). It can be easily deployed at any institution or organization running its private E-Mail server (MTA) with a trivial modification to that server. Our system offers a simple method to salvage the existing population of E-Mail addresses while eliminating all spam aimed at them.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.2 Network Protocols
          Subjects: Applications (SMTP, FTP, etc.)

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.5 Local and Wide-Area Networks
          Subjects: Internet (e.g., TCP/IP)

  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.3 Communications Applications
          Subjects: Electronic mail

  K. Computing Milieux
  K.4 COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY
      K.4.1 Public Policy Issues
          Subjects: Abuse and crime involving computers

General Terms:
Algorithms, Human Factors, Security

Keywords:
Electronic mail, privacy, spam