Yahoo creates anti-spam standard
Yahoo creates anti-spam standard
Yahoo has adopted a new technique for blocking spam emails from fraudsters who are difficult to track down because they hide unwanted messages behind legitimate email addresses.
Sendmail, Inc., has teamed up with Yahoo to deliver DomainKeys, which is a cryptographic authentication solution that provides a mechanism for identifying the email sender of hoax messages.
The solution matches outgoing messages containing encrypted digital signatures against signatures on the server computer that sent the message. If this standard is adopted by other Internet providers, it will allow them to check the signatures of incoming messages and block the ones that don't match up.
Eric Allman, CTO of Sendmail said. "Cryptographic authentication solutions, such as DomainKeys which was introduced by Yahoo, provide a strong assurance of both the sender's identity and the integrity of email content. DomainKeys is one of the best cryptographic solutions we have seen because it offers strong authentication and flexibility with low impact to both the email infrastructure and end-users."
Brad Garlinghouse, vice president of Communications Products at Yahoo added. "By validating identity with DomainKeys, we are knocking down the first and most important domino in the path to solving the spam problems. In working with Sendmail, and other industry leaders, we are able to develop a powerful authentication solution to solve the spoofing problem and lay the foundation for future anti-spam advances."
Yahoo and Sendmail are looking into developing this as an open source package that will allow different email systems to use it as a standard anti-spamming facility.
Spamming is a growing problem worldwide. Large providers such as Time Warner's America Online block up to 2.5 billion junk emails every day.
This technique could also be used to block fraudulent "phishing" attacks that are used to collect credit card numbers.
Microsoft's Hotmail and MSN services recently developed a "white list" which means that legitimate marketers have to pay up front to avoid spam filters.
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