IETF Reportedly Rejects Sender ID

Several Internet sources today reported that the Internet's Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has officially turned thumbs down on the proposed Sender ID specification. The new technology was developed this spring by the Anti-Spam Task Force which was led by Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo!, and Earthlink.

The IETF's decision was apparently based on Microsoft's insistence on basing much of Sender ID's workings on proprietary technology. While the company was willing to license the technology to all comers for free, there was general suspicion, especially in the open source community, that the situation would change over time and that Microsoft would hold too much control over how the standard evolved going forward.That is apparently what led to the IETF decision.

Sender ID is a standard that verifies the "From" field of an e-mail by authenticating it against an Internet domain. Spammers are currently able to bombard e-mail users with messages from fake e-mail addresses. The technology is based on Microsoft's Caller ID technology combined with the Sender Policy Framework developed by Meng Weng Wong.

Spammers have already been known to compromise the potential for sender authentication using the SPF portion of the technology.