E-mail "stamps"

[iago]

Only accepting emails from people on your list is another way of taking care of that.  But with the current email architecture, that can easily be forged.  

I think the problem is mainly the person who opens executable attachments.

[Grok]

It's a good idea to make it so that as an anonymous sender you can purchase clearance to put a mail in a recipient's mailbox. The money has to go 90% to the recipient. That way, you whitelist all the people you know, and the ones you don't know have to pay you $0.10 for you to read their mail. You should be able to set the price tag yourself as well. Lawyers might charge $50 for reading an e-mail letter.

I agree Adron.  That should be extended to telephone and cel phone calls.  The caller should be prompted to pay to complete the call if the owner has set a price to be contacted.  Whitelist your friends and family and business acquaintances.  Also give receiver an option when receiving the call to waive the fee, for example if a friend is calling from an un-white-listed number.

[Adron]

Yes, an option to waive the fee makes it perfect. Then the only risk you're taking is that the receiver doesn't want your mail, and if he doesn't, you shouldn't be mailing, should you?

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

Here's a general email question for ya.

Why don't SMTP servers validate the sender? They should look up the mx of the sending domain and make sure the IP address matches the one of the sender.

Am I missing something totally obvious here?

[Grok]

Here's a general email question for ya.

Why don't SMTP servers validate the sender? They should look up the mx of the sending domain and make sure the IP address matches the one of the sender.

Am I missing something totally obvious here?

That's already on the table as a proposed upgrade to SMTP specification.  It may even be in committee?

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

Dammit, I'm going to write an email server that does that.

[Thing]

Too Late.

[Banana fanna fo fanna]

Should build that into sendmail.