The Penny Black Project is a Microsoft Research project that tries to find effective and practical ways of fighting spam. Because identifying spams consumes a recipient's time, the idea is to make the sender of emails "pay" a certain amount for sending them. The currency or the mode of payment could be CPU cycles, Turing tests or memory cycles. Such a payment would limit spammers' ability to send out large quantities of emails quickly.
The project's name is derived from the Penny Black, the world's first adhesive stamp used for pre-paid postage.
Famous quotes containing the words penny and/or black:
“And not an hour ago you hadn’t a penny to warm your pocket. Did someone die and leave you a pot of gold?”
—Dudley Nichols (1895–1960)
“O my black soul! Now thou art summoned
By sickness, death’s herald, and champion;
Thou art like a pilgrim, which abroad hath done
Treason,”
—John Donne (1572–1631)