Serverless Electronic Mail
This addresses privacy and control issues for email users by eliminating server dependencies, though it is incremental as it builds on existing protocols like SMTP and Tor.
The paper tackles the problem of reliance on third-party mail servers by proposing a peer-to-peer email system that enables users to exchange messages using multiple unlinked identities, leveraging SMTP and Tor for delivery and communication. It demonstrates interoperability with existing email systems and explores extensions like mailing lists and distributed ledger technology for consensus.
We describe a simple approach to peer-to-peer electronic mail that would allow users of ordinary workstations and mobile devices to exchange messages without relying upon third-party mail server operators. Crucially, the system allows participants to establish and use multiple unlinked identities for communication with each other. The architecture leverages ordinary SMTP for message delivery and Tor for peer-to-peer communication. The design offers a robust, unintrusive method to use self-certifying Tor onion service names to bootstrap a web of trust based on public keys for end-to-end authentication and encryption, which in turn can be used to facilitate message delivery when the sender and recipient are not online simultaneously. We show how the system can interoperate with existing email systems and paradigms, allowing users to hold messages that others can retrieve via IMAP or to operate as a relay between system participants and external email users. Finally, we show how it is possible to use a broadcast protocol to implement mailing lists and how distributed ledger technology might be used to bootstrap consensus about shared knowledge among list members.