Curbing junk e-mail via secure classification

This work identifies the components of a system that realizes the concept of extended e-mail addresses and investigates the functionality of these components in a manner which is backwards compatible to current e- mail tools.

Abstract

We introduce a new method and system to curb junk e-mail by employing extended e-mail addresses. It enables a party to use her (core) e-mail address with different extensions and consequently classify incoming e-mail messages according to the extension they were sent to. Our contributions are threefold: First, we identify the components of a system that realizes the concept of extended e-mail addresses and investigate the functionality of these components in a manner which is backwards compatible to current e-mail tools. Secondly, we specify an adversarial model, and give the necessary properties of extended e-mail addresses and of the procedure to obtain them in the presence of the adversary. Finally, we design cryptographic functions that enable realizing extended e-mail addresses which satisfy these properties.