Fairness in Certified Electronic Mail

The growing use of the Internet promotes the replacement of traditional manual transactions by equivalent electronic services. Research was carried out to investigate enhanced services related to electronic mail. This paper points out that a certified email protocol has to provide the sender of a certified email with an evidence that this email has been either received or refused by its recipient, and proposes a new definition of the fairness property, specific to the certified email field. Finally, a new efficient certified email protocol respecting this property is presented.