A Cryptocurrency-based E-mail System for SPAM Control

Abstract

Sending bulk e-mail is commercially cheap and technically easy, making it profitable for spammers, even if a tiny percentage of recipients falls for the attacks or turn into customers. Some researchers have proposed making e-mail paid so that sending bulk e-mail becomes expensive, making spamming unprofitable and a futile exercise unless many victims respond to spam. On the other hand, the small sending fee is negligible for legitimate e-mail users. Making e-mail paid is a challenging task if implemented using a conventional payment system or developing new cryptocurrencies. Traditional payment systems are challenging to integrate with e-mail systems, and new cryptocurrencies will have challenges in adoption by users on the required scale. This work proposes using cryptocurrency payments to make e-mail senders pay for sending an e-mail without creating a new cryptocurrency or a new blockchain. In the proposed system, the recipients of the e-mail can collect the payments and use the collected revenues to send e-mail messages or even sell them on an exchange. The proposed solution has been implemented using Ropsten, an Ethereum Test Network and tested using enhanced E-mail Client and Server software.