TexasPundit

The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has preliminarily adopted the DomainKeys Identified Mail proposal being pushed by Yahoo, Cisco, Sendmail, and PGP Corporation. Assuming the draft (RFC4871 for all my fellow geeks) is formally approved end users could (finally) have a powerful tool that theoretically could reduce the amount of SPAM they receive in a major way. How will it work? Quoting CNET:

DomainKeys works by embedding a digital signature in the headers of an outgoing e-mail message. If the cryptographically secure signature checks out, the message can be delivered as usual. Otherwise, it can be flagged as spam.

Here’s an example of an embedded DomainKeys header:

DKIM-Signature a=rsa-sha1; q=dns;
d=example.com;
i=user@eng.example.com;
s=jun2005.eng; c=relaxed/simple;
t=1117574938; x=1118006938;
h=from:to:subject:date;
b=dzdVyOfAKCdLXdJOc9G2q8LoXSlEniSb
av+yuU4zGeeruD00lszZVoG4ZHRNiYzR

Success will ultimately depend on widespread adoption. Needless to say, with Yahoo and Sendmail backing this proposal it’s only a matter of time before the other large players jump on board. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope for the best.

Read the entire article here.

The DKIM homepage is located here.