Towards Security and Balance in Email Through Correspondence Negotiation

Email has emerged as a preferred communication medium among people of all generations. With the increasing number of users, SPAM has become a major cause of concern. Spammers are taking advantage of vulnerability of the email transport and delivery protocol (SMTP), to spread viruses, send fraudulent messages, etc. Consequently, the current email system suffers from lack of security, and imbalance between senders and receivers. This work introduces Correspondence Negotiation Protocol (CNP) to make email communication more secure. We address the current imbalance between senders and receivers, and try to solve this imbalance by providing more control to recipients and making senders more accountable. We present an implementation of Correspondence Negotiation Agent (CNA) - an email client that supports CNP. CNA is composed of three principal components: Authenticator, Negotiator, and esecretary. It has been implemented by extending JMail. CNA runs on multiple operating systems and can inter-operate with other email clients.