Salesforce has won a patent to detect spam emails using blockchain technology. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a document, Nov. 7. that describes the intent of the cloud-based customer relationship management firm to use blockchain to ensure the authenticity of emails sent to customers.

According to the information on the USPTO website, an email messaging system is provided that includes a first email message server, a second email message server and a distributed database system that stores a blockchain.

The first email message server receives an email message from a first user system, and records a selected component of the received email message into a block of the blockchain. The selected component of the email message is added to the blockchain after validation by other participants in the blockchain.

When the second email message server receives the email message from the first email message server, the second email message server can determine whether a component from the received email message matches the selected component that is stored in the block of the blockchain.

For now, this is just a concept, and it remains to be seen if and how this will translate to working reality.