Dynamic email

Any modern anti-spam solution can be compared with a diesel generator on board a spacecraft: a cumbersome inefficient and oxygen-consuming.

Description of the problem

Email remains one of the main means of business communication, despite the problem of spam. This problem is partially eliminated by spam filters, which work more or less well on servers with large email traffic, i.e. where there is what to analyze. This is how most "successful" spam filters work. Spam filtering statistics of 95-99% with such solutions do not inspire confidence, because calculated averaged over a significant number of mailboxes of one or more resources. If you take a separate "beautiful" email, for example, alex@mail.ru the picture will be different.

A modern anti-spam solution is a powerful hardware and software system that cannot develop extensively to infinity. To recognize this, it is enough to assume that some resource has undergone a spam attack 10 times more powerful than the average background. Resist? And if 100 times? The resource will not survive, sooner or later.

Let's try to find a solution to the problem with a simple example.

The classical scheme of communication on the website of the entrepreneur:

It would seem that everything is fine; The email is hidden using the feedback form, the spam is dropped by the filter into the basket, and only the desired correspondence gets into the "inbox".

Not everything is so good, at least:

1) Email will get to spammers sooner or later, for example, as a result of unfair competition, because registering any email in spam databases is a matter of two minutes;
2) Many entrepreneurs do not trust the work of spam filters due to false positives and have to regularly look through the spam basket in order not to miss an important message;
3) There is a common error when the feedback form is tied to the main or corporate email, which is protected by spam filter, which means that the confirmation received when sending the website "Your message received, thank you!" does not mean receiving it!

In fact, it is still worse; an entrepreneur becomes a hostage of a discredited email, attempts to transfer contacts to social networks do not give the desired result and are ambiguously perceived by users. In social networks, too, spam. Some entrepreneurs use external mail traffic filtering, but they still have to look through the spam basket. Since the basket can be on the resource, which requires a separate authorization, it comes to the fact that the answers to messages can wait up to 2 weeks! And this is called "modern communications"?

Some experts assess external mail filtering, simply, as a weak link controlled by someone and somewhere, in general, somewhere “in the clouds”.

Another nuisance: some spam filters may take responsibility for removing unwanted correspondence, for example, the message “Hello! You asked to be reminded of our agreement” is likely to be removed by a filter, and the deal will fail.

Proposed Solution

1. We get rid of the spam filter and the basket.
2. We supplement the mail server with a web server with feedback forms.
3. We change the algorithm for receiving and sending messages, observing all current postal standards.
4. For "filtering" we use only the "black" and "white" lists.
5. We introduce the concept of dynamic email , i.e. we give the user some additional address space.

Example: if [ user@site.ru] is the main email, then a dynamic email may look like [ user.???@site.ru ] or [ ???.user@site.ru ], where ??? - a combination of characters, changeable by the user, and the dot "." or any other character allowed for use in postal addresses or their combination is used as a separator.

The new scheme of work will look like this:

Comments to the scheme:

• The “black” list is not shown on the chart due to the obviousness of its work;
• The main email [ user@site.ru ] is used to receive messages and authorize on the mail resource, i.e. WEB-mail, POP, IMAP and SMTP;
• Messages sent via the feedback form arrive at the current dynamic email [ user.1@site.ru ], which will later be used to communicate with the relevant users from the white list;
• Receiving messages to previously used dynamic addresses [ user.???@site.ru ] is made in accordance with the white list;
• When a spam attack on the main email [ user@site.ru ], it is deactivated for a while, i.e. an attempt to send to this address will receive error message No. 550 SMTP unknown recipient ;
• In the case of an attack on the current dynamic email, it changes, for example, to [ user.2@site.ru ], i.e. any attempt to illegally send to a previously used dynamic address will also be accompanied by error message No. 550;
• Before a long absence of access to the mailbox, the user is advised to deactivate the primary email and change the current dynamic email.
  Fighting spam for a user will be reduced to clicking on the "spam" button and managing email addresses. Mail server will prompt and help.

Weakness?

Someone will note appropriately: "What about those who have my contacts, but who did not get in touch with me, that is, who is not on the white list?". We are looking for answers in the algorithm of the proposed mail service: first, the address is not always closed for reception; secondly, the comment in the error message 550 "unknown recipient" is replaced with a more informative system, for example:

Your message to user@site.ru was rejected by the mail server (for such and such a reason).
To contact the user, please use the "contacts" page: www.site.ru/user/contacts

This approach is justified:

• The initiator of the contact is usually the sender, and it is logical to assume that he needs to expend some effort to do this;
• We work on the principle of "old friend - better than new two" ;
• If the message is not delivered, the sender is honestly notified about this, it does not remain in the dark about what became of the message (delivered or not, put in the basket);
• The “unlucky” sender is offered a familiar alternative method of delivering a message using a feedback form, using which he receives (or does not receive, once on the black list) a reliable, permanent communication channel with the recipient;
• Using the feedback form is much simpler than forced, one may say, discriminatory registration on the social network;
• Using the "contacts" page, the sender receives confirmation of the actual delivery of his message to the recipient's inbox, which is a worthy replacement for the phone call after sending the message ;
• It takes time, a week, two to discredit a mailbox, this time is enough to establish a contact or subscribe to the newsletter using dynamic email;
• To repel a spam attack, it is enough to deactivate the main email for a day, to prevent attacks, deactivation can be done on a schedule, for example, on weekends and at night;
• The user has ample opportunities to publish his contacts: primary and dynamic email, server-generated link to the "contacts" page and the "contacts" banner;
• In the event of email discreditation, there is no need to order new business cards and advertising booklets.

Contacts do not like to be idle for a long time, so on the business card of the author of the article email is presented, for example, like this: [y ... @ nnw.ru], i.e. with a long space. This is done so that when meeting someone you could quickly convert a possibly deactivated primary email into a dynamic one with a fountain pen, for example, [y .GV @ nnw.ru].

Additional benefits:

• Savings on software and hardware capabilities of mail resources. The share of spam takes up to 80% of mail traffic, for the same amount of communication channels and disk space of mail servers. At the end of 2015, 45,000,000 signatures were used by spam filters, these are serious computational capabilities. It is much easier and cheaper to refer to the "black" and "white" lists and decide on the fate of the incoming message without downloading it to the mail server, and using the released hardware-software capabilities to improve and develop services.
• There are about 2 billion mobile email users on the planet whose gadgets are usually included. The service will allow these users to sleep peacefully at night.
• The solution offers a safe way to unsubscribe from mailings, including those initiated by hackers, spammers and dishonest competitors.

Yury Vasilyev