Bill Gates announces end of spam
Mar. 2nd, 2004 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lostcarparkBill Gates has announced Caller ID for Email, a system which allows mail servers to check where a message actually came from. This could make email address spoofing a thing of the past, which would mean spammers could only spam from their own domain.
In theory this is a very good thing, except that a similar standard called Sender Policy Framework has been in development for some time and has the support of companies like AOL, who are already testing it on their email servers.
While I'm all for developing alternative technologies and letting the better one rise to the top, I don't see how Microsoft are helping the situation here. Caller-ID has some advantages over SPF, but it also has some problems, and could cause some DNS servers to choke. Microsoft may have some ideas that would improve SPF, but wouldn't it be better to join the SPF working group and have their ideas incorporated rather than developing a rival standard?
I can see three ways this could go:
Hopefully before it comes to that, Microsoft will see sense and begin working with SPF.
Having said all that, if all the technical issues can be worked out, we will be able to tell with some degree of certainty that an email came from the domain it says its from, which will make life a little bit easier.
In theory this is a very good thing, except that a similar standard called Sender Policy Framework has been in development for some time and has the support of companies like AOL, who are already testing it on their email servers.
While I'm all for developing alternative technologies and letting the better one rise to the top, I don't see how Microsoft are helping the situation here. Caller-ID has some advantages over SPF, but it also has some problems, and could cause some DNS servers to choke. Microsoft may have some ideas that would improve SPF, but wouldn't it be better to join the SPF working group and have their ideas incorporated rather than developing a rival standard?
I can see three ways this could go:
- One standard is quickly adopted and the other falls by the wayside.
- Both standards are adopted leading to administrators having to install and maintain two pieces of software that do the same thing, and generating a lot more network traffic than necessary.
- Both standards slug it out in a brutal and messy fight before administrators decide the situation is unworkable and give up on it.
Hopefully before it comes to that, Microsoft will see sense and begin working with SPF.
Having said all that, if all the technical issues can be worked out, we will be able to tell with some degree of certainty that an email came from the domain it says its from, which will make life a little bit easier.
