UE>> mail from [EMAIL PROTECTED] (for example), which is desirable.  Right
UE>> now it's technically possible for anybody to send mail from
UE>> [EMAIL PROTECTED], although in some sense it's illegal. But spammers
UE>> don't care much about laws.

I think the problem is not technical here - I can think of a few methods
to implement sender verification with minimal adjustment to existing
protocols and with introducing entirely new ones. The problem here is that
until the significant part of the email-sending crowd does not use that
method, whatever it be, you can not reliably filter your email based on
this method. Meaning, corporate clients probably won't pay for
implementing such a method - or would not pay enough for this feature to
become necessary in every common software.  Which means, common software
won't have it or won't rely on it - back to square one.

Now, there are two obvious ways out of this vicious circle:
1. Widespread world-wide conspiracy of sysadmins and programmers to 
implement and install the protocol.
2. Adoption of the protocol by some company like Microsoft or IBM that can 
make anything an industry standard. As they say, nobody ever got fired for 
buying IBM, and I'd add - for following IBM (or Microsoft) advice either. 
So if they say it's a good way to fight spam/viruses/etc - whatever "it" 
be "it" probably would get widespread acceptance - enough to catch 
momentum. And more importantly - enough to make those who didn't 
implement it yet somewhat uncomfortable - like when users ask 
administrator "why our clients complain that emails from our company come 
out as 'Unaunticated sender - probably spammer!' in Outlook - please fix 
it ASAP". Network effect is required for such things. 

UE>> OK, we can do without SSL certificates, but we can't do without
UE>> domain names and DNS.  Some things have to be centralized.  But I
UE>> agree that my proposed solution will have to deal with a lot of
UE>> beurocracy.

It is not easy to authenticate a person even in RL - identity theft 
and various scams are not unheard of, and it is much harder online when 
you can't see or touch a thing. 
However, most of the cases with email for the recipient it is enough to 
know that the sender of the email is authorized by the domain 
administrator to send it. At least, for detecting email forgery it would 
be enough - and mass-hosters of course would have to implement some 
internal mechanism to not allow users impersonate one another - but this 
would be outside of the email communication domain.
-- 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]       \/  There shall be counsels taken
Stanislav Malyshev      /\  Stronger than Morgul-spells
phone +972-54-6524945   /\              JRRT LotR.
whois:!SM8333





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