Can we get rid of SMTP now, please?

[rhu]

SMTP, the mail protocol that we've been using for three decades or so, presumes that users can be trusted and networks can't be. It's time to invert those assumptions, and require that every email message be delivered directly from the sender's machine to the recipient's mail queue, with IP tracking enabled (and a challenge-response authentication scheme to provide a guarantee that the IP address wasn't forged), digital signatures, and a requirement that the transport envelope match the header addresses.

Worse than the time and money that I have to spend on filtering my own incoming mail is the tsuris I go through making sure that email FROM my family or the Zamir lists doesn't get bounced because I didn't hear about some new algorithm that people are using to blacklist mail servers that appear unsecured.

There is no reason why this problem can't be solved in a month if the big email companies would stop trying to view spam as a profit center. (Yes, AOL Yahoo Google Microsoft, I mean you! If spam were actually made impossible, would anyone spend money on a "better spam filter"?)

Comments

[sethg]

Sounds like D.J. Bernstein's IM2000 idea. (As the name implies, this has been out there for a while and hasn't gotten any traction.)