I'm going to make a suggestion which I realize that today there isn't any easy way to do this. However, I want to throw this out because I think if we could figure out how to do it, I think the spam problem will go away. Anytime anyone sends a mail to my server, I want to be paid 2 cents. 2 cents is probably less than the combined costs of me recieving a mail message. (Maybe 3 is better). That said, even if it was 2 cents, then a spammer dropping 10,000 messages on my server would net us $200.00 - and better, cost the spammer $200.00. Normal email between two people would likely cancel out and be of no net cost. You would also want to be able to accept mail from certain senders for free. What I envision is some sort of micropayment protocol extension to SNMP. something like you exchange helo's, mail from, and rcpt to's, and the receiving server says to the sender "That will be x cents please", at which point the server sends some sort of cert-signed digital cash. I'm not sure how you would bootstrap this or if it will ever be possible. I just think that if we could get even $0.02 per email from the spammers a lot of them would stop. - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) AC7DE ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Innovation Machine Ltd. P.O. Box 5749 http://www.imach.com/ Helena, MT 59604 Home of PacketFlux Technogies and BackupDNS.com (406)-442-6648 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect your personal freedoms - visit http://www.lp.org/