Microsoft-backed antispam spec gets filtered out
A Microsoft-backed proposal for verifying the source of e-mail has been shelved by the Internet engineers working to turn it from specification to standard, in a final blow for antispam technology Sender ID.
Sender ID is a technology designed to foil spammers by authenticating an e-mail sender's "@" address, such as "@yourbank.com," by checking its underlying, numeric Internet Protocol address. The system combines a previous proposal called Sender Policy Framework, or SPF--authored by Meng Wong, chief technology officer at Pobox.com--and Microsoft's follow-on "Caller ID for E-Mail Technology."
On Wednesday, the technical standards body Internet Engineering Task Force, or IETF, announced that the working group charged with building consensus on the Sender ID proposal has "concluded."
"From the outset...the working group participants have had fundamental disagreements," according to the IETF announcement, referring to the working group formally known as the MTA Authorization Records in DNS, or MARID. Therefore, MARID's co-chairs "concluded that (it) should be terminated."
Instead, the IETF has granted Sender ID "experimental" status so that the industry can test it, along with competing e-mail authentification proposals, and build consensus that way.
