Friday, September 12, 2003

http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/current_issue/tompkins/index.html
Giving E-mail back to the users: Using digital signatures to solve the spam problem by Trevor Tompkins and Dan Handley

The following portion of the abstract is for this paper which argues that current legislative and private attempts to stop spam are either ineffective, or involve unacceptable tradeoffs. The key to solving the spam problem is recognizing the importance of e-mail authentication and the granting of permissions. Properly used, digital signatures can easily authenticate e-mail for effective spam control. The ability to manage public keys for verifying digital signatures provides each e-mail user the individual power to control who communicates with her and can therefore completely eliminate the practice of spamming.