I've been thinking about what it would take to actually eliminate spam
or reduce it to less than 10% of what it is now. One of the problems is
the SMTP protocol itself. And a big problem with that is that mail
servers talk to each other using the same protocol as users use to talk
to servers.
Rather than get all users to change maybe it would be easier to get
server software to change. This transition can be done by making server
software that can do both protocols to maintain compatibility but will
use the new protocol if both sides are capable of talking at that level.
I'm not sure what the specification of the new protocol should be but it
should at least be different than what email clients use so that server
to server communication isn't the same as client to server
communication. Perhaps server protocols can have more authentication
information that would protect them from being spoofed. But having
something different - even if it's just a port change - is better than
what we have now.
Thoughts?
(sorry about posting the same message to the dev list. My mistake)
