A Differentiated Message Delivery Architecture to Control Spam

Overview

Unsolicited bulk electronic mail (spam) is increasingly plaguing the Internet Email system and deteriorating its value as a convenient communication tools. This paper argues that the difficulties in controlling spam can be attributed to the lack of receiver control on how different Email messages should be delivered on the Internet. In the current Email delivery architecture, a user can send messages to another at will, regardless of whether or not the latter is willing to accept the message. Based on this observation, they propose a differentiated message delivery architecture-DiffMail. In DiffMail, a user can classify Email senders into multiple classes and handle messages from each class differently.