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4 Rivals Almost United on Ways to Fight Spam
By SAUL HANSELL
Published: June 23, 2004
Four large Internet service providers agreed yesterday to a partial truce in their battle with one another over potential technology to stop junk e-mail in hopes that they can devote their united energy to fighting spam.
More than a year ago the four providers - America Online, Yahoo, EarthLink and Microsoft - said that they would work together to create technical standards that could verify the identity of the sender of an e-mail message.
Most spam, and nearly all of the messages in the rapidly growing identity-theft fraud known as phishing, is done with a fake return address. Many experts suggest that a system that could identify and discard such falsely addressed messages is one of the most potent possible weapons against spam.
"The biggest thing we can do to reduce spam is sender authentication," said Brian Sullivan, the senior director for mail operations at America Online.
But the Internet providers have supported different technical approaches. Last month, Microsoft agreed to merge its proposal, called Caller ID, with another, called Sender Policy Framework, or S.P.F., backed by America Online and EarthLink. The new name of the combined standard is Sender ID.
Yahoo had continued to support a very different approach, called Domain Keys, that is more technically powerful but would take longer to carry out.
In an announcement yesterday, the two remaining camps agreed to give limited support to test each other's technology.
"Over the last year, we had four gorillas learning how to dance," Mr. Sullivan said. "Finally we can work from the same choreography."
Full Story
By SAUL HANSELL
Published: June 23, 2004
Four large Internet service providers agreed yesterday to a partial truce in their battle with one another over potential technology to stop junk e-mail in hopes that they can devote their united energy to fighting spam.
More than a year ago the four providers - America Online, Yahoo, EarthLink and Microsoft - said that they would work together to create technical standards that could verify the identity of the sender of an e-mail message.
Most spam, and nearly all of the messages in the rapidly growing identity-theft fraud known as phishing, is done with a fake return address. Many experts suggest that a system that could identify and discard such falsely addressed messages is one of the most potent possible weapons against spam.
"The biggest thing we can do to reduce spam is sender authentication," said Brian Sullivan, the senior director for mail operations at America Online.
But the Internet providers have supported different technical approaches. Last month, Microsoft agreed to merge its proposal, called Caller ID, with another, called Sender Policy Framework, or S.P.F., backed by America Online and EarthLink. The new name of the combined standard is Sender ID.
Yahoo had continued to support a very different approach, called Domain Keys, that is more technically powerful but would take longer to carry out.
In an announcement yesterday, the two remaining camps agreed to give limited support to test each other's technology.
"Over the last year, we had four gorillas learning how to dance," Mr. Sullivan said. "Finally we can work from the same choreography."
Full Story