openmtl's Journal: Spam cancel-maps: ISP issued cancels for Spam.

With respect to end-user SPAM that we pick up from pop3 accounts (not commercial SMTP connections) the following is proposed. Its a long solution: read on to the end slashdotters and don't just read this initial paragraph !.

Why can't ISP talk to each other and decide that certain traffic is SPAM. They then send cancel messages (I call it a cancelmaps (spam backwards)) that works like a cancel bot in Newsgroups.

I've since found its called email innoculation. I emailed the guys who are planning a RFC on this and mentioned my email quarantine/delay idea. Hopefully it'll segue into mindspace.

Thing is your mail reader has two tweaks;

Tweak (A) - "inbox delay". This is where emails have a variable delay before they are visible. Though initially I thought that the delay in proportional long according to the spamyness of the spam its also inversely proportional to the size of teh network of email inoculation agents.

Tweak (B) - "cancel maps trust". It has a trust relationship with your ISP or other sin a 'network' so that the cancels from the ISP or other network members are trusted enough to zap the emails from the inbox-waiting queue.

How it works: When a ISP identifies that one of its subscribers is spamming, or that their commercial anti-Spam service e.g. Brightmail, detects that this is SPAM, then the ISP sends to all spammed destination a cancel-maps message that effectively marks the message as spam.

The ISP doesn't have to store much: hash of the content plus other hashed details. Keeps this for a short while e.g. 1 month for each email message. Once spammer reported then the ISP simply sends out cancel-maps messages to all who were spammed.

The trick is to delay how visible email is in your inbox based on its spam metrics. Some email has perfect non-spamminess because the sender is in your address book or you have had outgoing email thats been sent to them. This appears at once. Other email has less quality until eventually its perfect spam. The more spammy it is or the smaller the network then the longer it hides in the inbox. The logic of that is once the commercial email anti-spam companies or the ISPs identify spammers/spam then the ISPs send cancel-maps to whoever got that spam and thus the cancel-map zaps the hidden spam before you waste time on it.

Well thats the basic logic of this. Won't get all spam but will help clean up inboxes at least over time.