Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
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.
Authenticating the sender is a major step towards preventing spam. It's also important to users to know that the message they received is really sent by an authenticated E-mail address. It can reduce (but not completely prevent) cases of phishing, worms etc. But in itself it is not a complete solution against spam. The reason is because spammers can (and do) register new domain names and use them for spamming. That's why I think there should be a way to limit the number of messages sent by each person to a small number, and check that it's a real person who sends them. I know it's not easy to do it, but I think we can find a solution. We can also try other methods that will distinguish between spam and legitimate mail. But authentication itself is not sufficient.
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.
It will help if the big companies in this industry will implement new protocols that will reduce spam. The biggest companies in this industry are Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. If they all agree on a specific protocol, they have the power to promote it. Especially Microsoft, which not only controls Hotmail, but also Outlook - the most popular E-mail client I think. But I believe the current methods these companies offer are not enough. Best Regards, Uri Even-Chen Speedy Net Raanana, Israel. E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: +972-9-7715013 Website: www.uri.co.il -------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
