> > however if you know that the message comes from a trusted source, > > you might give it preferential treatment. for instance, you might > > allow it to be delivered immediately. if you aren't sure about > > the message source, you might refuse to accept the message for > > some period of time - a few hours or a few days. > > Unfortunately, one of the best uses of email is to contact people > outside your circle. I got a couple of mail messages today from people > I haven't heard from in a while and who I would not have had in my > whitelist. which is precisely why it's important to not reject such mail out of hand. > I think the main good certification can do is to stop some of the > idiocy mail forging viruses have started. indeed, if we could just make it easy to trace the source of viruses (so that we can detect them earlier and make it more likely to catch them close to the source), that would seem like a big win. Keith