Putting Control of the Inbox in the Hands of the Recipient

BuyerLeverage's patented sender-accreditation technology put control of the inbox where it belonged — with the person receiving the mail. It made spam economically self-defeating by shifting the cost of unwanted email onto the commercial senders who profit from it, rather than the recipients who would otherwise bear it. A sender not yet known to be trustworthy posted a refundable pre-payment to send accredited email for a set period; recipient complaints revoked the accreditation and forfeited the unused balance. Because the cost of losing that privileged status outweighed the short-term gains of spamming, spammers were deterred — and it was regular recipients, through their own complaints, who held the leverage, rather than an opaque filter deciding on their behalf. Legitimate senders, in turn, built a verifiable track record that over time removed the need for further deposits. The technology was widely licensed, and Microsoft publicly identified it as its leading solution to spam.