kaled - 9:20 am on May 24, 2007 (gmt 0)

Since there was some approval of my suggestion, I shall elaborate, just in case someone with clout is reading this.

1) The originator sends a brief "I-have-mail-for-you" signal to the recipient. This could contain from:, subject:, and date: headers, etc.
2) The recipient then either requests the mail or sends an "unwanted" signal. (The request could include a public encryption key for secure mail.) This request could be sent by servers or by users - there are advantages to both so ideally, the user should be able to choose which system to use, but, on balance, I think user-requests would be preferred (but mail retrieval would be slower).

This would not stop bot-generated spam but it would mean that much of it is never sent since it would mostly be rejected by users after reading the from: and subject: headers. Thus this system would reduce bandwidth requirements considerably.

This system is simple - there are schoolkids out there that could implement it and no cryptography is required. And because it would reduce the load on recipient servers, the tendency to block mail by IP address should be reduced (this blocks many legit mails too!)

Also, if a protocol similar to http was used for mail retrieval, bandwidth requirements for attachments such as photos (currently hex-encoded) would be much reduced.

This would not eliminate spam entirely but it would make it impossible to fake the origin of any spam that is sent. It is simple, requires no cryptography and would reduce the overall bandwidth requirements of email traffic considerably. It opens the door for truly secure email and eliminates the need for receipts. Can any other system come close to these advantages?

Kaled.