Ephemeral Email Address Generation with Signed Secrets

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Solution Overview

Problem

Email users face issues with unwanted communications when sharing their email addresses with potentially untrustworthy organizations, as blocking the original sender does not prevent third-party abuse, and revoking the email address disrupts communication with legitimate senders, causing inconvenience.

Innovation Solution

A system generates ephemeral email addresses with user-supplied friendly names, using secrets that are signed and propagated to network gateways, allowing users to revoke the addresses and reject further emails, thereby controlling unwanted communications without affecting legitimate senders.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Object-affected harmful factors

If a temporary email address is created for use with a specific organization, then the user's main email address is protected from exposure, but the email server system experiences propagation delay that prevents incoming emails from being accepted until the new address is fully propagated to all gateways

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveprotection of main email address from exposure to untrustworthy organizationsVSAvoidpropagation delay before temporary address becomes valid for receiving emails

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system pre-generates multiple temporary email addresses for each user in advance, before the user actually needs them. These addresses are created with associated secrets and propagated to gateways beforehand, so when the user needs a temporary address, it is already ready and valid for immediate use, eliminating the propagation delay problem.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system segments the single temporary address creation process into multiple pre-generated addresses, each with its own secret. This allows the user to have multiple ready-to-use addresses without waiting for propagation, and can select from pre-validates addresses rather than creating one at a time.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

2Loss of time

If multiple pre-generated temporary addresses are created for each user in advance, then the propagation delay problem is solved, but the user cannot select or identify the addresses easily since machine-generated addresses lack user-friendly nomenclature

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveelimination of propagation delay for temporary email addressesVSAvoiduser ability to select and identify temporary email addresses

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of timeVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

The system introduces an intermediary mapping layer between the machine-generated temporary addresses and user-friendly identifiers. Users interact with memorable names or patterns, while the system maintains the mapping to actual email addresses and their secrets, making the system both efficient and user-friendly.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

Different parts of the address system serve different functions: machine-generated addresses provide technical validity and secrecy, while user-friendly aliases provide memorability and selectability. The system combines these qualities by allowing users to work with friendly names that map to the actual temporary addresses.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #3Local quality

3Object-affected harmful factors

If the user revokes the email address to stop unwanted communications, then spam and abuse are prevented, but communication with legitimate senders is also blocked, causing inconvenience

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveprevention of spam and abuse from untrustworthy organizationsVSAvoidcommunication capability with legitimate senders

Core Design Contradiction:

Object-affected harmful factorsVSEase of operation

Solution Approach 1:

Instead of having a single email address that blocks all communications when revoked, the system provides multiple temporary addresses. Users can revoke individual addresses that are being abused while retaining other addresses for legitimate communications, segmenting the communication channels to maintain flexibility.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The system changes the state of temporary addresses from permanent to ephemeral, allowing them to be created and revoked as needed. This parameter change enables users to dynamically adjust their communication channels, revoking only when necessary while maintaining others for legitimate use.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #35Parameter changes

Data Source

PatentUS8806590B2Signed ephemeral email addresses

Publication Date: 2014.08.12 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

Architecture for generating a temporary account (e.g., an email address) with a user-supplied friendly name and a secret used to the sign the temporary account. For example, when a user wishes to create a temporary email address to use with an online organization, a friendly name is provided and the system generates a temporary email address including the friendly name. A signing component signs the temporary email address with a secret. One or more of these secrets can be provisioned prior to the user's creation of a friendly name, which eliminates propagation delay. During use, only incoming email messages having the temporary email address signed with the secret are validated. When the user revokes the temporary email address, the secret is revoked and the revocation is propagated to network gateways, rejecting any email sent to that address.