“Microsoft this week unveiled its long-awaited technical roadmap for combating spam, which the company identifies as the top complaint of its e-mail customers.
Formally called the Coordinated Spam Reduction Initiative or CSRI, Microsoft’s anti-spam proposal consists of three industry-wide steps:

- Development of an e-mail equivalent of Caller ID to make spoofing a less attractive method for spammers.
- Creation of independent e-mail trust authorities (IETAs) that would certify and monitor legitimate high-volume e-mail senders. The IETAs would help set reasonable behavior policies and verify the identities of compliant senders through digital certificates or safe lists. The IETAs would charge high-volume e-mailers large fees for their services.
- Creation of a less expensive alternative for low volume e-mailers than the independent e-mail trust authorities. An example of an alternative would be payment in computer cycles, through required tasks that expend a few seconds worth of compute cycles per message sent. Spending that kind of time per message would put high-volume spammers out of business, according to Microsoft.”