New Anti-Spam RFC Drafts: Welcomed Correspondence Extensions to SMTP/POP/IMAP

[David Szego <da...@mindslip.org>]

Good day,

I present to you a set of anti-spam measures called "Welcomed  
Correspondence Extensions" comprising a set of extensions to SMTP/POP/ 
IMAP servers and email clients, as a new and novel approach to white  
and black lists in the fight against unsolicited email. These have  
recently been submitted to the IETF as standards-track Internet-Drafts.

The goal of Welcomed Correspondence Extensions is to provide, in the  
simplest and least intrusive way possible (both programmatically and  
to the user), a method of avoiding unsolicited and unwanted email  
(spam) without drastically changing the infrastructure of the  
Internet's existing mail transports. These documents describes a two- 
phase evolutionary approach in order to maintain compatibility with  
existing standard POP3/IMAP4 retrieval/delivery servers, SMTP mail  
transfer agents, and end-user mail clients.

The attached documents are as follows:

draft-szego-wcor-overview-01.txt
A summary of Welcomed Correspondence (WCor) purpose and concepts

draft-szego-wcor-smtp-01.txt
Welcomed Correspondence Extensions to ESMTP Mail Transport Servers

draft-szego-wcor-imap-01.txt
Welcomed Correspondence Extensions to IMAP4 Mail Delivery Servers

draft-szego-wcor-pop-01.txt
Welcomed Correspondence Extensions to POP3 Mail Delivery Servers

A discussion forum, FAQ page, and copy of the drafts have been set up  
at http://www.mindslip.org .

I look forward to your comments on these papers, and hope to have  
your participation in seeing them through to fruition as accepted  
extensions to mail protocols, and their implementation in popular  
mail software.

Yours,
David J. Szego
david@mindslip.org