I’ve been thinking about what it would take to actually eliminate spam or reduce it to less than 10% of what it is now. One of the problems is the SMTP protocol itself. And a big problem with that is that mail servers talk to each other using the same protocol as users use to talk to servers.

Rather than get all users to change maybe it would be easier to get server software to change. This transition can be done by making server software that can do both protocols to maintain compatibility but will use the new protocol if both sides are capable of talking at that level.

I’m not sure what the specification of the new protocol should be but it should at least be different than what email clients use so that server to server communication isn’t the same as client to server communication. Perhaps server protocols can have more authentication information that would protect them from being spoofed. But having something different – even if it’s just a port change – is better than what we have now.