On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 06:16:23AM -0800,
newsalerts-noreply(_at_)google(_dot_)com wrote:
| YAHOO announces plan to identify source of spam
| The Inquirer, UK
| ... of cryptography in Yahoo's protocol potentially allows some clever
| tricks that aren't possible with the simpler SPF system. One of these
| is rejection of spam ...
| <http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=13086>
In this case the alternatives being "nipped in the bud" are proposals
like SPF, sponsored by Yahoo Mail rivals pobox.com. Other people working
on the problem of identifying the source of mail include theIRTF
(Internet Research Task Force). Clearly Yahoo doesn't feel these
net.bigwigs are getting there fast enough and want to shortcircuit the
process by announcing the imminent announcement of its own pet scheme.
The main difference between SPF and Yahoo's "Domain Keys" is that Yahoo
uses cryptographic signatures, rather than the IP (numeric) address of
the sender, to determine the source of a mail. This means the receiving
system has to first download the entire mail in order to check the
signature. In the case of SPF you can reject the mail immediately, since
the originating IP address is revealed, caller-ID style, the moment
someone contacts your system with a message. There's also a certain
processing overhead inherent in the Yahoo idea, since there will be huge
numbers of signatures to check - good news for purveyors of 64 bit CPUs
everywhere.
On the other hand, the use of cryptography in Yahoo's protocol
potentially allows some clever tricks that aren't possible with the
simpler SPF system. One of these is rejection of spam that has been sent
through a mailing list and thus doesn't reach you directly from the
server of the perpetrator.
-------
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