Motivation
Spam is a growing problem on the Internet. If you have used the Internet for any length of time, you have probably received solicitations via e-mail to purchase products or services. It is not as simple as just deleting them. Spam effectively shifts the costs of advertising from advertiser to recipient, costing the public (yes, that includes you) millions of Euros in lost time, lost money, and resources wasted. Not to mention I find it extremely annoying and rude.
The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (CAUCE) is an ad hoc coalition of Internet users that promotes legislation to outlaw spam. While they do a good job, note for instance their recent success in Europe1), filtering spam can help reduce the amount of spam reaching your inbox.
I developed the Bunny after having tried the Tagged Message Delivery Agent (TMDA) system. I really liked the approach the TMDA follows but found it too hard to configure for a typical home user (using POP-3 accounts rather than administrating your own e-mail domain). Pondering on what to do, I realized it should be rather straightforward to implement their approach and, hence, the Bunny was born.
1) On 30 May 2002, the European Parliament decided to ban spam. The literal text in the new 'publication of COM(2000) 385 Proposal for a directive concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector' says: "The use of automated calling systems without human intervention (automatic calling machines), facsimile machines (fax) or electronic mail for the purposes of direct marketing may only be allowed in respect of subscribers who have given their prior consent."
