Microsoft’s updated Sender ID gets AOL Nod

Microsoft’s updated Sender ID gets AOL Nod

The anti-spam initiative from Microsoft’s stable got a major head start when AOL gave its ok to it after certain modifications were made to the original draft. The original presentation from Microsoft was blasted by everyone especially the Open Source community which claimed that certain patents in the draft went against Open Source ideology.

The updated version of Sender ID has addressed many of the criticism it faced earlier. These changes included removal of patents that could have included claims to Sender Permitted From, or SPF, a widely used system for email authentication that was merged with Microsoft’s CallerID for Email to create Sender ID, according to a ZDNet story. The updated version has been resubmitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force for approval.

Sender ID is a technical specification being developed by Microsoft to find a solution to number one preference of spammers, which is user id spoofing. It involves sending junk mails to users with fake email-id so that they appear to be from some reliable sources. This is a big security hazard considering a lot of mails are spoofed to look like they are from financial institutions. Citibank and EBay are some of the victims.

Interestingly, Google has already test implemented similar technology on their webmail GMail. It is a technology, which is supported by Yahoo! though still to be implemented on Yahoo! Mail. Users on GMail get a special notification if the mail is not sent from the server that matches the sender’s mail id.