In even more Apple news, apparently the company has created an ingenious way to cut down on spam. on February 13, 2014, Apple filed a patent application entitled “Disposable Email Address Generation and Mapping to a Regular Email Account .”¹ This is quite an interesting concept. The abstract included in the patent filing sheds light on why and how this concept will cut down on spam:

An integrated system allows easily creating and using disposable email addresses. The disposable email address is created by an email server, which manages correspondence using the disposable email address to avoid exposing the associated non-disposable email address. Context information may be associated with a disposable email address, where the context information is not visible in email sent using the disposable email address. Expiration information may also be associated with the disposable email address, where the expiration information defines conditions that cause the disposable email address to expire. Should the disposable address be misused, the associated context may allow a user to recognize what correspondent exposed the disposable address to misuse.²

Under this new system, email as we know it would, essentially, remain the same. Rather than  any wholesale fundamental changes, Apple will allow users to create what amount to disposable email aliases that would be mapped to the main email account. However, there is a complex server-side intelligence component that would allow for a much more detailed spam screen, also allowing users to track the source of this spam. Apple Insider has a pretty good description of this intelligence component:

In some cases, the system can assign context information when creating the disposable account. For example, if a user is giving their address to a vendor, context information associated with that vendor’s name can be added as part of the address. If the user receives spam through that specific account, they will be able to examine the associated context information and use it to take action against the vendor for providing the address to an unauthorized party.³

This is a very interesting concept, and I, for one, hope that it is successful.