Abstract
Unsolicited and undesirable e-mail (spam) is a growing problem for Internet users and service providers. We present the Secure Internet Content Selection (SICS) protocol, an efficient cryptographic mechanism for spam-control, based on allocation of responsibility (liability). With SICS, e-mail is sent with a content label, and a cryptographic protocol ensures labels are authentic and penalizes falsely labeled e-mail (spam). The protocol supports trusted senders (penalized by loss of trust) and unknown senders (penalized financially). The recipient can determine the compensation amount for falsely labeled e-mail (spam). SICS is practical, with negligible overhead, gradual adoption path, and use of existing relationships; it is also flexible and appropriate for most scenarios, including deployment by end users and/or ISPs and support for privacy (including encrypted e-mail) and legitimate, properly labeled commercial e-mail. SICS improves on other crypto-based proposals for spam controls, and complements non-cryptographic spam controls.
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Herzberg, A. (2005). Controlling Spam by Secure Internet Content Selection. In: Blundo, C., Cimato, S. (eds) Security in Communication Networks. SCN 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3352. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30598-9_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30598-9_24
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