The Register says that email authentication is gaining steam, but I am wondering who is going to arbitrate the standards infighting.
Yahoo has consistently pushed its DomainKeys, and now processes more than a billion messages a day signed with the measure. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Sender ID (with its shaky past) could make a “comeback” now that MS is chasing outsourced hosting strategies.
Will be interesting to hear how the battle progresses.
A marketing trade group starts requiring its members to use authentication, but Techdirt says its a joke that only leads to more problems.
I don’t have much of an opinion on it either way, as the whole authentication battle seems like a bunch of monkeys in a barrel. But I seem to have been effected by Microsoft’s moves with Sender ID.
(more…)
Sender ID has been the subject of controversy for some time. It started with a bunch of promises, and since then Microsoft has attempted to force everyone’s hand.
All the while, its originator, Meng Wong, sitting in the middle.
Email Battles recently interviewed Wong, creator of SPF (the precursor to Sender ID), and it seems he is none too happy about the situation.
The battle continues in the fight for authentication standards. Microsoft recently made their “proprietary” offering, Sender ID, standard fare for Hotmail, but Sender ID’s sketchy beginnings made me question whether it would ever really take hold as a strategy for making it the norm everywhere. What starts bad rarely ends good.
Now, a proposal is being considered over at the Internet Engineering Task Force which may further douse the flames of Sender ID. Some engineers think Sender ID conflicts with SPF, another authentication standard in experimental mode right now, and that Sender ID should just be stopped.
My opinion is this: adopt an authentication standard that is royalty free forever, based on open standards, under a licensing scheme that requires 100% interoperability at all times. Enough said.
I don’t really get this, so I am looking for a little input.
Microsoft is cramming Sender ID down everyone’s throat by making it a requirement for legitimate messages in Hotmail; meanwhile better than 80% of spam already uses some authentication scheme (including, in cases, Sender ID).
Please help me here. What is Microsoft thinking?
Paul Murphy over at CIO Today put together an interesting piece on the ubiquity of authentication, the jurisdictional and timing issues involved with nabbing phishers, and some of the underlying reasons why the powers that be don’t just stop the problem in its tracks. But hope is on the horizon, from an unlikely source.
(more…)
In Solutions from PC Magazine: The Spam Stoppers, it is suggested that Sender ID actually enables spam.
I am not following, so someone please explain it to me.
(more…)