I've dealt with corporate intranets in the past, which have completely blocked e-mail from the outside unless one is on an approved list. Contact must always go through the network administration.

Individuals working within these institutions receive absolutely NO spam inside their network because they have turned the filtering problem on its head. In typical spam filtering, you filter information from select addresses or with select content . In reverse filtering, you only permit information from select addresses or with select content.

It's Not Difficult

Why can't ordinary mail servers do this? It's relatively trivial to reverse filter. You enter a list of the only acceptable sending addresses. These will be the only ones that get through. Such a solution would be fantastic for children whose parents don't want them to receive any e-mail from strangers.

However, from a human engineering standpoint, the increased barrier to use is discouraging for many. People will not be able to use a reverse filtering e-mail address if they expect or encourage unsolicited e-mail. Sites such as osOpinion would not be able to function with reverse filtering since they rely on unsolicited e-mail.

There is a solution. Spam doesn't come from people; rather, it comes from machines. A person creates the content and initiates the distribution. But from then on, a machine -- a dumb machine at that -- does the rest.

Acceptable E-Mail

It would be quite onerous to burden the recipient with the job of constantly maintaining a list of acceptable e-mail addresses. But on the shoulder of the senders, the task is more distributed. Furthermore, it could be simply automated.

Here is how it would work; I would send an e-mail to a reverse filtered address. In return, I would receive an e-mail telling me that I am not on the list of acceptable senders, but that I can be. I then would be given instruction on how to join this list.

In a high-security situation, I might be offered a pointer to a Web site where I could make my request. In a lesser situation, I might be able to hit reply and add a small bit of content to get in.

Turning the Tables (continued...)

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