EPA DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

Consideration Areas Content

1. Human
2. Technology
3. Application
4. Operational
5. Economic
6. Legal
7. Proof-of-Concept
8. Customer Support
9. Customer Training
10. Documentation
11. Manufacturing
12. Marketing
13. Deployment

Human Considerations

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Technology Considerations

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Application Considerations

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Operational Considerations

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Economic Considerations

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Legal Considerations

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Proof-of-concept Considerations

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Customer Support Considerations

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Customer Training Considerations

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Documentation Considerations

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Manufacturing Considerations

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Marketing Considerations

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Deployment Considerations

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Wanted & Unwanted are mailbox-local definitions

Bulk-mail can be beneficial.

Unwanted can be temporary or permanent.

If only e-mail address components, natural language words and mutually-agreed text strings CAN be 'Wanted', 'snowflaking' and other obfuscations of mail content can only cause the mail to be classified as 'Unwanted'. If you can get hold of it, you can control it

Multipliicity of e-mail server environments

EPA's mail filtering and classification process produces NO FALSE POSITIVES AND NO FALSE NEGATIVES!

How? EPA's e-mail classification is based on the presence (or absence) of an exact match between user text patterns/strings that describe the e-mail user's preferences and the e-mail's text field content.

An exact match classifies the subject e-mail as 'wanted' (for acceptance or transmission onward processing). No exact match classifies the mail as 'unwanted' (to be subjected to disposition processing options).

A test for the equality of two quantities produces only 'equal' or 'not equal' as a result - never 'maybe'. Hence, there are NO false results from such a test!

A user CAN exhaustively specify exactly what's WANTED. A user CANNOT exhaustively specify exactly what's UNWANTED.

ASSUMPTIONS:

1. Effective exact uniform legal definition of spam is impossible. Every e-mail user has a personal definition that differs from at least one other user's definition.
2. Effective legal remedies are impossible There are too many conflicting definition, jurisdiction, enforcement, human resources and budget/cost issues to be resolved.
3. A 100%-effective solution that's operational today is worth more than all other current and potential less-effective solutions. It controls the existing problem and provides a stable platform on which to base evolutionary extensions and enhancements.
4. Every e-mail server implementation's internal component structure and functioning is logically identical to all others. 'Form' follows 'function' in a highly standardized environment.
5. All Internet and intra-net message traffic text and file components are available for integrated adjunct processing during reception or transmission. All e-mail traffic in a server can be totally controlled and sequenced by a single, data driven management process.

EFFECTIVE SOLUTION DEFINITION:

1. Define 'spam' to be any e-mail that the addressee doesn't WANT to receive.
2. Manually and/or aided by software tools, allow all e-mail users to specify personal filtering criteria that defines e-mail they WANT to receive. E-mail not conforming to the user's criteria is UNWANTED by definition.
3. Employ the same process to fully-support enterprise e-mail management and filtering with hierarchical criteria application. Permit domain System and E-mail Administrators to supplant and/or override individual domain e-mail users' criteria and subsequent processing.
4. Permit only those criteria definitions for which tests can yield only 'yes/no', 'equal/unequal', 'within-limits/out-of-limits, or 'matched/not matched' results. No false classifications can result from such criteria and tests.
5. During mail server traffic processing, apply the user's criteria - appropriately and without error - so that all e-mail satisfying ANY single criteria is classified 'WANTED'. Thus, e-mail satisfying NO single criteria becomes classified 'UNWANTED'
6. Enable post-classification processing of 'WANTED' traffic to be user-specific, programmable and multi-functioned. Ensuing actions can include simple delivery or transmission or more complex 'daisy-chained' system integrity and security functions, encoding/decoding, translation, and advanced information systems functions.
7. Enable domain-global post-classification processing of 'UNWANTED' traffic. At a minimum, 'UNWANTED' mail is either accepted and discarded or returned as 'undeliverable' or forwarded to a user-specified URL.
8. RESULTS:
   • Definition of 'spam'(UNWANTED email) is user-personal.
   • Only the mail that the user 'WANTS' is delivered to the box.
   • 100% of 'UNWANTED' mail ('spam') is NOT delivered to the user's box.
   • Users can choose to accept bulk mailings from favored suppliers.

KEYS TO EFFECTIVENESS:

1. E-mail addressees specify personal filtering criteria for their mailboxes.
2. 'WANTED' mail is sorted first. The remainder is 'UNWANTED' because it didn't meet the WANTED criteria.
3. Tests whose results are mutually exclusive CANNOT generate false results. Some false results can cause the addressee serious damage - while others are merely annoying.
4. The e-mail user's workload and associated costs are reduced significantly!
5. The System/E-Mail Administrator's workload and associated costs are reduced significantly!