An Automation of Mail Channels

Mail channels allow an electronic mail (e-mail) user to have multiple points of contact, each with a potentially different policy. For example, a user may have two channels, one for personal use and one for business use. The former channel’s policy may accept all senders and the latter channel’s may restrict senders to those within a given company. By extending this example, an e-mail user can have a channel unique to each contact, each with a policy that restricts its use to the particular contact. Traditionally, this scenario requires substantial administrative overhead, making it impractical. The system described here, the Spam Free Mail (SFM) service (see https://sfm.cs.ualberta.ca), automates the creation of mail channels. Its restrictive mail channels effectively eliminate a considerable part of e-mail abuse, such as spam and phishing.